After my last post, I dutifully went to my local craft store and got some supplies, and attempted Martha Stewart’s gorgeous Polar Bear. And it didn’t really turn out the way I’d hoped. But in the process I discovered that I LOVE needle felting! But not so much as a cute animal creation method – more as a fantastic way of putting different colours and textures together in a way that I love the look of. The two cuffs above started life as a couple of strips of felt that I loaded up with a variety of merino roving, and various other fabrics & trims. Then I discovered that I could felt the ends together to make a cuff and the two above were born. Of course I didn’t take any photos along the way because I had no idea I was going to love them so much at the end!

So I was supposed to be at my nieces wedding today and because I couldn’t make it – I promised her I would wear something orange in her honour (the bridesmaids dresses were her favourite colour – you guessed it! Orange). I was wracking my brain trying to figure out if I owned anything even vaguely orange when I realised I could make another cuff that I could wear & it would be really special because of the sentiment attached to it. AND, this time I took photos along the way . . .

An orange strip of felt, some black, red & orange merino roving, a ball of really funky charcoal “nobbley” “wool”, some black kind of lacey/fishnetty (don’t ya just love my technical terms!) wool and the other bits & pieces you see pictured above.

For those unfamiliar with it – needle felting is a technique where you repeatedly stab your material with one or more barbed needles to manipulate the fibres of the fabrics together – extremely satisfying, the repeated stabbing!

Then I (very gingerly to avoid stabbing myself because I haven’t figured a better way to do it yet) rolled the felt strip up and needled the two ends together while holding them together with the fingers of my other hand:

And this is what I wore today in honour of my nieces wedding.