I have made a few 3D needle felted character brooches and now I am ready for 2D Wool Painting.
1. Choose Reference Image
The first step is to find the reference picture that you will work from. Therefore, you need to decide where your wool painting will end up being displayed and the visual appeal it will have to either you or your imagined audience. I intend on applying mine to a wool jacket, with an English woodland theme. I have already created a fox and I spied an image of a rabbit or hare on a tin on Glen’s work-table, so that will be my next wool painting.
2. Prepare Transfer Image
I just took a photo of the tin with my phone camera and then printed it out. If you source your image online, then assuming it has decent resolution, you can just print it out. Those with some artistic talent might like to draw the outline of their reference image.
3. Base Fabric
A whole variety of fabrics can be used for Needle Felted Wool Painting. In the main, I use 1mm wool felt; when I can source it. Most felt is readily available as Acrylic and reasonably available as 60% wool, 40% acrylic. Because I aim to upcycle, as much as possible, its fortunate that you can also use other fabrics, such as cotton and linen. If you are going to use these, I recommend looking for fabrics with a tight weave and hoop them to work on.
4. Transferring, Two Ways
There are a whole variety of ways to transfer the outline of your reference image; I will just cover the two most popular ways.
Felting Needle Way – to do this, you need to have your base (felt) fabric on top of your foam pad and then your printed or drawn image on top of both. Then take two needles and poke them through the printed paper, in the top left, spaced 2cm apart. This will secure your image so that it does not displace as you lift it up and down, to see needle holes below. Create holes in the felt below by poking your needle through the paper above and into the felt below. Repeat for a few holes, spaces a cm apart and you will have a “follow the dots” impression in the felt. Lift the paper away and use a pen to join the dots. Repeat this until you have the outline for the whole image.
Transfer Pen Way – this is the most popular way to transfer outlines onto fabric.
I have a few transfer pens and they all work just fine and I get many transfers with them. The Sulky one I sourced online, while the bottom one is from my local Spotlight store. Just a note, these work in reverse, so if you are worried about the orientation of you image, then print it out in reverse. This can be done either in an image app such as Microsoft Paint, or even in your printer management software; just do a google search to find out how.
I just draw around the outline of my image as well as key features.
Then, using an iron, on the wool setting (because I’m using wool felt), I transfer the image outline.
5. Felting Needle tools and Supplies
There a whole variety of felting needles and going into details will require another, much longer blog. As a quick reference, this is a good source of information: guide to needle felting. The good news for wool painting is that you really only need one: Star – Size 38 gauge, for fine detailed work. The other tools you will need are a foam mat and optional rice bag and multi-needle tool.
For 2D Needle Felting and Wool Painting, it is best to use Wool Batts, rather than wool roving.
One thing that I have noticed is that wool batts or batting is more expensive and I have to source it online and wait for days until it arrives. I have solved this by upcycling wool yarn that has been discarded and ended up in thrift shops. I do this with a pair of very cheap pet brushes (wool carders). The process is quite easy: I cut the yarn into small pieces, untwist it into single ply and then card it. The other advantage to making your own wool batting from discarded wool yarn is that you can also blend different wool colours, using the same process.
6. The Painting Process
Painting with wool is a good description because the process is very similar to painting. Keep an eye out for future blogs and I will make a demonstration video.
One thing that I do is to use my multi-needle tool, regularly, to make sure that areas are well felted down (see video above). I, also, regularly, pull the project off the foam mat or rice bag. The reason for this is that the project starts to become felted or embedded in the foam of rice bag working surface and then when you separate it, your picture can become distorted, because you need to use too much force to remove it and the fabric starts to stretch. Another trick of mine is to regularly felt down with a steam iron. This seems to work the same way as wet felting, where the heat and water help the wool barbs to interlock.
7. What Next?
It seems that most people that paint with wool, frame their finished pictures, just like paintings, and display them somewhere. I, on the other hand, like to either make iron-on patches or attach directly to clothing. Keep an eye out for future blogs.