Needle felted teapot.

As I tried to make a felt tea pot out rolling method and I felt it didn’t work I attempted to create one with needle felting and it was so incredibly to get the shape but once complete I feel it worked so much better then  sewing rolled felt together.

To start with I needle felted a flat piece of felt until it was starting to firm together. I then cut 2 pieces of sponge into a circular shape and glued them together so I could used that to start felting together the shape of the teapot, this was hard as the sponge was a different texture and strength to the foam so it wasn’t pulling the fibres together properly. Once I had a shape I could work with I removed it from the sponge and started to make the shape by holding it between my thumb and finger, this worked a lot better as I was able to create tension. This was very time consuming. Once the shape of the body was as firm as I could get it I added extra felt inside which had been rolled just to make it stronger. This really helped with keeping the shape firm. For the spout of the tea pot I used a pipe cleaner as the frame and then wrapped wool around it and needle felted it together and I continued doing this until the shape had been formed, I then attached this. I also used this method to create the handle. I had a problem with the spout standing up as the felt was weighing the pipe cleaner down, to overcome this I will need to use a stronger wire, such as milliners wire or florist wire. Once I had attached the spout and handle to the body it was time to create the lid, to do this I twisted wool into a circle shape until it was the size I needed. I then felted this together trying the keep the shape; I turned it over many of times so I had good consistency of the fibres. Once the lid was starting to firm I created a dip in the centre and a lip round the sides to give the lid the right look, I then felted a small ball and connected that to the top of the lid, once I put them all together I had a fully formed teapot.

Although this process is extremely time consuming I feel it works so much better then rolling felt and sewing it together, I did have a problem with getting it firm but either stuffing or adding extra felt stops this. I used un-dyed wool for this sample as I didn’t know how much wool it would use up and I didn’t want to run out of colours I would use in my final piece. Over all I happy with this sample.