Tools for Needle Felting

For a long time, I have just been holding needles in my hands when I wanted to baste something in place before bringing it to my needle felting machine, but in the last few weeks, I have begun to look at some of the hand needle felting tools that are on the market.  Since I have decided that I really needed these tools, I thought that I would offer them on the website as well.

Two of these tools come from Clover, a 5 needle hand felting tool and a pen style needle felting tool that holds from 1 to 3 needles.  The other, from Colonial, is a set of very reasonably priced hand carders for blending fibers. 

You can use any of the UNCUT needles that we sell EXCEPT the SIZE 36 needles.  The SIZE 36 needles are 3.5 inches long and the Clover tools use 3 inch needles.

Clover 5 Needle Felting Tool:   I really like that this tool has a safety guard to help keep you from poking yourself with the needles.  It also has a locking mechanism so that the needle guard does not move and protects the needles.  And, my favorite part is that it has a sort of spring action that makes hand felting with this tool quite easy on the hand and wrist.  Although I have the brush that Clover makes for use with this tool, I am not nearly as impressed with it.  All of my felt came out very hairy when I was making something using the brush, and the brush was hard to keep clean.  I recommend that you use a piece of dense upholstery foam instead, and if you cover it with a piece of Vilene water soluble stabilizer, the felt is easy to remove from the foam and is not nearly as hairy as with the brush.

The Pen Style tool is great.  It holds from one to three needles and you can use them in either of two available depths.  This tool also has a spring action of some sort and it is easy on the hand and wrist.  This has become my hand basting tool of choice.  Being able to use just one or two needles to baste down yarns or threads is fabulous.  I had done this before by just holding a single needle in my hand.  But, now that I have tried this pen style tool, I can only say that I wish I had invented this.  Again, Clover suggests that you use this with the brush they sell, but I still recommend the foam.  The only thing that I wish that this tool had is a place to store the needles that you remove when you use only one or two of the three needles that the tool holds.

I was also pleased to see that Colonial is offering a set of very reasonably priced hand carders for blending fibers.  Most needle felters do not need to have a large set of hand carders and they can be pretty expensive.  These hand carders are just the right size, in my opinion, for most hand and machine needle felters.  They will allow you to blend different colors of fibers together and/or different types of fibers together before felting them.  For me, though, I find them most helpful when I want to have very fine layers of roving and I need help in getting the layers thin enough.  The carders help me to pull off the thin layers of roving much easier than by simply using my hands.  In the spinning world, these carders would more likely be called flickers because of their size, but in the needle felting world, these are most likely all that you will need. 

Quantity
Colonial Fiber Blenders $12.99     

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