One of my favorite skills I picked up recently is felting 3-dimensional dolls. It's really cool and they're very unique when you're done. It's very simple, and it's something you can do without paying too much attention for most of the work. Why is it geeky? Because my next project is to make this guy:
He's a character from "Avatar: The Last Airbender" which is a fantastic show. I thought I'd make him just to see if I can do a custom piece without any instructions from a book.
The things you'll need for felting are the following: Some wool. You can get various colors of wool at a good-sized hobby store. Most hobby stores I've seen will actually have a small section devoted to felting. You can also find needles here. Felting needles are sort of uniquely shaped. They're very sharp, but the shaft of the needle is barbed, to grab fibers and push them down between one another. You'll get a pack of probably 5 of them all together. You'll also need some foam. I like a 1-2" thick piece of pretty dense stuff. This is your backstop, essentially. You'll be poking through the wool and into this foam about a billion times, so get something vaguely sturdy and at least 6" x 6" so you can work on larger pieces. If you want to make something with legs, you'll also need some piping cord. You can get this at a good-sized fabric store for super cheap. I got some 1/8" stuff for like $.10/yd or something silly. This is the body of the legs you'll be making, and will help keep them stiff enough for your little beastie to stand up.
That's really it. Pretty simple process, really. The only real danger is poking yourself, and as long as you are aware that it will happen at some point, it really isn't that traumatic. Just be careful and try to keep your fingers out of the way. The other danger is "over-felting" I guess you could call it. Basically, if you're working a piece of wool and you spend too much time in one area, you could get that part too dense and out of alignment with the rest of the space around it and get kind of a wonky shape. When you're first learning, be sure to go slowly, pick up your piece often and look at it from different angles to make sure all the curves and lines are where you want them and all. The other thing to note is that this is a very slow process. It's great fun for working in front of the TV or something, but it takes a long time. Don't expect to get a piece of felt in the size shape and density you want in any reasonable amount of time. To make something sturdy enough to stand up and survive over the years, you're going to need a lot more wool than you think, and you're going to need to felt it more than you think. Practice a bit with some basic shapes (sausage shape, ball, tube, etc.) to get a feel for how much you have to stab, how deep the needle should go, what angle it should be going in, etc.
This is a very simple craft to do, but you can make some really neat stuff with it. I suggest starting out with something simple, and working slowly and methodically until you start to feel comfortable with it.
The actual "how-to" portion of this entry is going to be a bit anti-climactic, I'm afraid. Here it is: You take a wad of wool and stab it a bunch of times with a needle. Honestly, that is the entirety of this art. The art itself comes in with shaping, design, use of color, smooth attachment of various pieces, etc. Honestly, if you go get a hank of wool from the store and just stab the crap out of it a bunch of times, you'll start to see how simple the process is. The barbs on the needle push and pull various fibers up and down through each other, melding layers of fiber with each other, increasing density and allowing for some surprisingly subtle shaping.
My source for this info and the reason I even know about the activity at all is this book: Little Felted Animals. If you can find a copy at your local library, give it a go. It has some more details about particular shapes, and even has patterns and ideas for various different animals you can make. Keep in mind that animals aren't the only thing you can make. Essentially, you could model any reasonable 3-D object with this method and a little ingenuity.
Happy felting!
