Yesterday was a nasty day – sideways rain for most of the day with a frigid wind that whipped right through you.  A good day to stay inside and work on some projects. 

My son has been wanting to felt a life sized cat 🙂 can’t say he doesn’t have lofty goals!  I wanted to try a new idea that was rolling around in my head.  So we grabbed some wool and got to work.

It was going to take a lot of needle felting to get a life sized cat, so I took a technique I have seen before and had him wet felt the body. 

You start by using a nylon and stuff it with wool…

keep stuffing until you have the desired shape and it is packed tight.

Then comes the easy part – throw it in the washing machine!  Run it through one washing cycle and one drying cycle.  To save on electricity and water, I threw our items in with a load of laundry.

I wanted to see if I could make the little sheep bodies with this same technique.  I stuffed the amount for one sheep and then tied a knot and stuffed more in.

I used this otherwise ruined fleece.  It is a blueface fleece that I washed and didn’t get all of the lanolin out and it is very cotted now.  It worked great!

Here is the start to his cat.

We felted the head seperate from the body and he needle felted them together.  He is going to needle felt legs, ears, and a tail today and add the finishing touches tomorrow.  He is so excited to have an inside cat 🙂

I had a request for colored sheep, so we played with kool aid and dyed the little, felted sheep bodies.

Dyeing with kool aid is so much fun and very safe for kids to help with.

You can even blend colors!

Look at all the pretty colors!!!

Much prettier than outside where it is STILL raining and our pastures are full of creeks and ponds.