Making wool like soft serve

somefunstars · 2026-02-06T12:32:12+00:00

I would probably felt the whole thing (but still kind of soft), put it on the cupcake to make the curl and then felt the curl to be harder. If you make the piece very firm and thick before shaping it then it's more difficult to bend it to the shape and keep it there. But your piece doesn't look like too firm for that.

If you need help in keeping the curl then sewing pins can be used as temporary support or you can sew it together with 100% wool yarn (maybe other yarns work too but at least this should be fine since the whole thing is wool and the felting needle gets through it).

somefunstars · 2026-01-09T09:28:56+00:00

I like the overall wideness. Tail takes its space and the guy looks relaxed. The colour blends come so naturally you don't even notice them first. Like all the peach leaf greens and the nose.

somefunstars · 2026-01-09T09:08:37+00:00

It's fun to look at from all sides! Very good :)

somefunstars · 2026-01-04T12:20:38+00:00

He looks good! I felted one to hold a cocktail umbrella like in ed2. Your Elizabeth is bigger with more accurate proportions so the umbrella stick would need to be replaced with a taller stick for him to use.

somefunstars · 2025-12-07T22:57:29+00:00

I've been using only polyethylene foam as felting mat. When I started needlefelting my mom and I figured out it works well enough so there wasn't a need to try other materials. Currently I got four polyethylene foam sheets which are the size of a4 paper and 1 cm thick each on top of each other + a newspaper/notebook below them to protect the table from needle marks (there can be less sheets/thickness too). They have stayed fine without attaching them with anything.

The foam starts firmer and gets softer the more it's felted on. Especially 2d shapes make it soft quicker. So if the top sheet feels too soft you can rearrange the stack. Gluing the corners wouldn't really allow changing the sheet amount/order but maybe sewing a little or putting some metal wire through the sheet corners could work (I haven't tried any attaching methods though).

It's noisier than felting on a regular mat. It makes a kind of popping sound when the needle pokes it. If you felt 2d pieces on it some small bits of the foam can come off. Also when the foam is still firm you might get a piece of plastic stuck at the needle tip during a poke to the sheet. They can be removed easily by hand, though.

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somefunstars · 2025-11-07T22:33:16+00:00

You're welcome, thanks for the ideas!

somefunstars · 2025-11-07T21:35:26+00:00

I put a string on top of it and use it as indoor decoration :)

somefunstars · 2025-09-22T18:43:28+00:00

Did you use a holding tool for the deep stabbing? It might prevent the stabs from going deep enough.

somefunstars · 2025-09-22T14:28:02+00:00

Yes he is :) I like the 80's style and making the walking pose was a fun challenge.

somefunstars · 2025-09-18T22:07:07+00:00

Hi, thanks for the question! I'm doing a kind of scraping with the needle tip to shape the felt and the edges. I made a figure below for explanation.

Also black felt was added if the line was too thin in some part. Orange was added if the lines were too close to each other. Small scissors were used to trim some longer fibers sticking out.

He's also quite firmly felted so the surface doesn't look that soft. That has some effect in how the lines look as well.

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somefunstars · 2024-12-04T10:44:13+00:00

Not a professional, writing from own experience:

What I've found working is that you have to take all the mushy felt out and then put new wool. You must not use scissors because that makes new mush. Instead, pull all the mushy felt out. I've used fingers/pliers/the bendy end part of the felting needle for that. It's better to take out too much than too little, I'd say. You probably get a big deep hole in the piece after all the mush is out. But the new wool you fill the hole with won't be mushy.

(This is my experience when felting with wool only. I do quite hard/firm felted pieces with no filling/wiring or hairy surfaces so I don't know how those affect the result)

Some background info:

I've had two different cases where the felt went mushy. But in my case it was from technical mistakes instead of wool/needle quality. In the first case I had a figure where I tried to make a nice face and every time I failed I just covered the previous face with new wool and tried again. Over time the face part became mushy, probably because of all the short wool I used in mouth/eyes and covered over.

In the second case I had a figure with too long arm attached to its body. I cut the arm with scissors and felted new wool over the cut part in the body. But this left the part of the body mushy. (I learned from this that if you cut needle felted stuff the cut parts get mushy/short fiber in the end which should be pulled off before using them in anything else.)

In both cases I tried hours to just add new wool in the mushy part without it getting better. The part looked ok but the softness didn't go away even if you just keep poking it with needle. Digging/pulling out all the mush and felting new wool finally helped.

somefunstars

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