Craft badge 1 - needle-felting

 I have done a little needle-felting previously. My first experience was at a Craft4Crafters show at Shepton Mallet - in October 2018. I was lucky enough to win a ticket for the show (if you don’t enter competitions you won’t win, and the competitions on Facebook are often genuine), and it included a free workshop session with Furzie. About 6 weeks ago I did a 3 hour workshop for a needle-felted postcard, so before the project I chose for the badge I had done maybe 4 hours of needle-felting in total - so a novice in my eyes.

The item I made with Furzie was a cat head.

I have attended the Craft4Crafter shows on several occasions, and love the colours of the wool batts and roving that I have seen - and ended up buying quite a few materials with the idea of incorporating them into my patchwork and quilting somehow. Time moves on, the years go by, and I haven’t done it yet…I still have a kit for making poppies.

I received a Rustic Robin needle-felting kit from my sister for Christmas in 2018, and this year I decided to make it. The kit contains the materials to make 2 robins, as well as 2 needle-felting needles, a foam block and a sewing kit. Printed instructions were also included, and contained photos as well as written instructions.

I set to one afternoon during my Covid isolation, and turned off the TV - it was just me, the wool, and the stabby thing.

I found some of the instructions a little tricky to follow - it wasn’t always so clear as to what I needed to do to make the body or do different parts of the robin. Different people develop different ways of doing things, so what works for some doesn’t always work for others, and I think that I’ve come to appreciate the ‘in person’ learning for crafting. Luckily there are some great books and websites to help when you get a bit stuck - one such website is The Makerss - they have a range of free tutorials for both needle-felting and wet felting.

I stuck with the instructions though, I didn’t deviate, and I did what I thought was right. I tried to put the different elements in the right place - I would have appreciated a few more directions as to where exactly the elements needed to be placed - e.g. the tail, the red breast. 

The act of stabbing a barbed needle into a growing ball is quite therapeutic. The key thing to remember is to turn the object regularly - removing from the foam pad is essential. The more you stab, the firmer the piece becomes. It is something that requires some concentration, - you don’t want to injure yourself! There are parts that don’t require the needle - and that is mixing the colours - it is quite surprising at how much the colour mix changes when you start to felt it.

As I have many other crafting projects underway already, I spent time in the morning doing them - and doing other jobs that needed doing, and then moved on to doing the robin. I spent a couple of hours over two afternoons making the robin - and in the end I was quite pleased with how the finished item turned out.

One of the challenges I am facing with the Rebel Badge Book is that I want to do ALL the badges, and do them all now! I am eager to earn the badges, so I am conscious that I may end up rushing some of them - which really isn’t the idea at all. I took my time making the robin - I could have pushed through and done it in one afternoon, but I had to prepare tea, and also knew it was worth taking the time over. Learning how to manage the time to get all the tasks done is a skill - and making sure that all the other life tasks get done as well.

I made just one robin from the kit - there is enough to make another robin at another time - maybe this time I won’t leave it so long!