there's something about felting

Those of you who knew me before I began this blog would know that my first craft was making jewellery and that I even had a brief stint selling my handmade jewellery on Etsy last July. The crocus necklace pictured on the right is one of my personal favourites, featuring antiqued brass and Czech glass beads in garnet.

My jewellery making hobby was always a little conflicted. I really don’t wear a lot of jewellery myself, but when I do, I’m drawn to elaborate and unusual designs like this necklace I made four years ago that converts to a bracelet, or this beaded choker featuring tiny framed illustrations from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll’s self-portraits I made one of my past Mad Hatter’s Tea Party themed birthdays. However, it was not easy for me to learn to accommodate for more tastefully restrained styles, and even when I tried, I just didn’t have as much fun with making jewellery.

Since I have picked up wet and needle felting in the last month, I feel as though I have found my calling.

Felting supplies are simple and affordable, while the beads, charms, components, findings and tools required in jewellery making are mind-boggling. Each of those categories also comprises an almost infinite range of sizes, colours, and materials. All my needle and wet felted projects come from wool roving, which differs most importantly by coarseness and colour. The latter can even be customised with hand dyeing.

If you wanted to move into metal smithing (welding your own metals) or lampworking (making your own glass beads), the space, equipment and resources needed for them will set you back several hundred dollars at least. I stuck with cold working, which meant I only ever worked with stringing bought beads on to silver, brass or copper wire, and even then I spent a couple of hundred dollars every month on supplies. All my tools and equipment for both wet and needle felting have not yet set me over $50 and $100 worth of wool will keep me in good stead for a long time.

Second only to those cotton/hemp friendship bracelets you learn to make in primary school, cold working is the easiest jewellery making technique to learn, and hence also the least skilful and unique. In my experience, jewellery makers, particularly cold workers, are very secretive about their suppliers. Finding cheap supplies is sometimes the only way we can compete with each other, but if someone else discovers where you purchased that antiqued brass crocus charm, there is virtually nothing preventing them from making the same piece as yours. I love that there is no deception to felting. Everything you see is wool and a lot of love, patience and elbow grease. Although I’m sure felters can still try to replicate another’s designs, it’s not as easy as buying the same beads and charms and stringing them together. You still need to build something from scratch and it will never really be the same as the original. Each creation is imbued with the soul of its creator.