Alpaca Meadows Blog: Easter Egg and Bunny Felting Class

My first "stab" at teaching turned out okay, I think. I wasn't sure how I would be at conveying my thoughts to others. We all got an egg made, first needle felted into an egg shape with embellishments tacked in place, then wet felted to finish.

Easter Egg Felting Kit

I do have kits available if you want to try this at home. It is not hard. Remember not to squeeze when rinsing the soap out. Wrap in a towel to absorb the excess moisture and lay in the sun or sunny room to dry.

The group was anxious to move on to bunnies and so we did.

Everyone brought alpaca fiber that they had carded into batts at home. We all were working with Suri Alpaca, so yes you can felt Suri! Adrienne had a pretty yellow pastel that she had Dyed with Kool-aid, Christie had some gorgeous white Suri to which she added red, also dyed with kool-aid.

I was working with multi-colored rovings that I had dyed with Gaywool Dyes. What I like about Dyeing With Gaywool is that the mordant and dyebath acidifier is formulated into the dye, which makes it simple, and there are so many pretty colors.

We divided our batts into nine pieces that we used to "build" our bunnies. We started with the body which took the most fiber, then added legs, arms, head, ears, and tail. Rolling the fiber tightly into the desired shapes was the "key" first step before starting to needle the fiber.

Diane used a natural color and had the help of her daughter, who found felting in cookie cutters to be much easier! A Multi-Needle Felting Tool makes the work go much quicker, most of us used a tool with six needles. A double or single needle was needed to get in the tight spots when adding the head and tail.

My daughter joined us, she is 13, can you tell? I guess she didn't want her picture taken?

When we wrapped it up, we all had some felting to do at home to firm up and finish our bunnies. Each one looked different and had his/her own personality!