Tuesday morning, October 15, 2013. This beautiful morning, our craft group gathered in the gazebo outside of The Company of Angels school store at 8:45am for our weekly craft group get-together.
Christine Newell taught our craft group to needle-felt a pumpkin and a mouse. This fall season craft is ideal for the season table and also suitable to use as props for story-telling. In fact, Rachel gave us a delightful little story to go along with this handmade pumpkin and mouse. The craft of needle-felting is usually introduced in Grade 6 in the Waldorf curriculum.
Thank you Rachel Skelly and Christine Newell for organizing our Waldorf School of Orange County weekly craft group get-togethers! – Jzin
Gallery of Past Projects from The Waldorf School of Orange County Craft Group
Click on the image below to view our craft group projects from the past.
Tuesday morning, October 15, 2013.
For a $10 craft fee, Christine taught us to make this delightful project. We also had access to all the craft supplies, such as hand-dyed wool roving, batting, felting foam boards, felting needles and such.
Here is Christine’s dry needle-felted pumpkin and its resident mouse, brought in as a reference for us.
Make a Ball Shape for the Pumpkin
Needle-felting wool batting into large ball shapes.
Batting versus wool top roving: We used wool batting as the inner core of our pumpkins. The fibers in wool batting are oriented in different directions. Batting is cheaper than wool top and it is easier to needle-felt.
Wool top is finer, more expensive and harder to felt relative to batting. The fibers in wool top run in one direction. We use wool tops to decorate the colors of the pumpkin.
Adding Colors to Felt Pumpkin
Heather radiating joy amidst a pile of fall colored hand-dyed (by Christine Newell) natural wool top roving.
I love Cathy’s pumpkin of variegated colors.
Cathy adding thin layers of wool tops to form varied tones on her needle-felted pumpkin.
As much as I love wet-felting. I think dry needle-felting for this project is a better choice. Wet-felting yields a more sturdy toy. Dry needle-felting gives a more “fuzzy” look which appear more “dreamlike” from a fantasy land.
In case you want to try your hand at wet-felting a project like this (more sturdy for play), here is the cutest little mouse in a wet-felted pumpkin tutorial by Sewn Natural…
Jzin’s Favorite Needle-Felting Tools
Needle-felting pen. You can needle-felt with 3 needles at once! You can hop on by at The Company of Angels to buy these clover pens, or you can purchase on Amazon.com by clicking on the picture below.
Here are my favorite fiber artists using the clover felting pens. They are smiling. It means this is a good needle-felting pen.
The magical spiral felting needles! I LOVE these puppies! You can get them from Weir Dolls and Crafts website or via Amazon Weir Doll’s store. Click on the image below to take you there.
The spiral needle has a twist into a spiral shape, makes each stroke much more efficient.
Speed up felting time with a spiral needle, both felts and twists the fibers with each punch, making your felted projects go much more quickly. Our in-house felter now swears by these needles as 3-4 times faster! Jzin says again: “I love them puppies!”
Amazon.com price: You can buy a pack of 3 or a pack of 20 on the above link.
- SPIRAL Felting Needles Size 38 bulk pack of 20…$29.98+$5.35 shipping
- SPIRAL Felting Needles Size 38 pack of 3…$5.95+$4.31 shipping
Needle-Felt Ball into Pumpkin Shape
You may want to push down slightly to flatten the top of the pumpkin.
In the picture above, the three little needle-felted pumpkins were handmade gifts from my supermodel friend Angela Hart. She used colorful embroidery floss to create segments on the pumpkin. For the same effect here, we used thin strips of darker roving to accentuate the pumpkin segments.
Sharon needle-felting dark strips of wool top roving to create segment on needle-felted pumpkin.
Geraldine Stopped by…
Lovely Geraldine has been helping out at our Twice Upon A Time store at school. She stopped by craft group to dole out some of her luxurious hand lotion with us crafters. Mmm! Nice! Thanks for the TLC, Geraldine!
Rachel Skelly’s Beautiful Mosaics
Click here to view Rachel’s website: Smashingmosaics.com
Here comes our Rachel with her refreshment tray. Rachel takes such good care of us. She served us Belle Fleur flower petal hot tea! Oh là là ! Merci, Chérie!
Rachel has been busy working inside The Company of Angels store these days and unable to join us for craft. However, she has also been busy mosaicking!
Here are some of her mosaic work.
Her entwined serpents mosaic…
Rachel led our past year craft group project for our Waldorf School of Orange County auction: The Ocean Themed Mosaic Planter. Click here to view more photos and the process of our work.
Adding Stems, Leaves and Tendrils
Gina adding greenery to her orange pumpkin.
Sharon and Liz’s special Mommy and Me time needle-felting-pumpkin-morning at craft group.
Cutting a Door into the Felt Pumpkin House
It is helpful to needle-felt (draw) out an outline of your door before you poke through your pumpkin surface with a sharp pair of scissors to make a door.
Use a good sharp scissors to make the initial hole. Pull out roving from inside. If your door is too thin, you may add more roving to it (the door) to make it more sturdy. Or embellish the thin door with colorful borders.
Josephine pulling out some (not too much) of the innards of her felt pumpkin.
Making a Mouse for the Pumpkin House
Start by rolling up some wool batting into a rough cylindrical shape. Tapering one end to form a pointy nose. You can pinch and roll, then needle-felt the nose into a pointy shape. We added pink noses to our mice. Attach a sturdy tail at the other end.
Josephine busily 畫龍點睛… I mean 畫鼠點睛 …
Josephine’s blog, in mandarin chinese: 柳橙海岸記事 Momentos of the Orange Coast.
Linda adding a tail to her mouse.
I love how the coat color of Linda’s needle-felted mouse was build up using two layers of contrasting colors to form a realistic fur coat.
Linda’s handwork. Squeak! Irresistible cuteness!
Our Completed and Almost Completed Projects at the End of the Morning
Josephine was the first one to finish her work. There was joy and cheering all around for this success!
Josephine’s mouse, peering from his little pumpkin house.
Thanks to my kibbitzing her work, Josephine’s pumpkin house now has a window, in addition to a door.
Hurray! Anička (with help from mom Alena) completed her needle-felted mouse in a pumpkin house in time for her French lesson in town. Dépêchez-vous Anička! Mlle Sabine vous attend!
Anička has made plans to display her felt handwork away from her 3 curious kittens at home.
Gina and her work from this morning. Sweet!
Sharon’s gorgeous handwork by the end of the morning.
Gisela’s mouse and her pumpkin with spirally tendrills.
Heather’s little brown mouse perched atop his little pumpkin house.
Super crafter Gloria started late. She joined us after her Mommy and Me Playgroup session. Yet Gloria managed to get her pumpkin to near completion at the end of our crafting session.
That’s all for this week, folks. Make sure you come to craft group so you don’t miss out on all the fun! – Jzin
Click on the image above to see some of my Fall season table dolls. – Jzin
Last Week’s Craft Group Project: Wet-felting Flowers With Luxurious Raw Mawata Silk Hankies Embellishments.
Click on photo below to see more of what we did last week.
Next Week: Baby in a Bunting.
Tuesday October 21, 2013. Christine will show us how to make a baby in a blanket. This is in part a simple knitting project. We will be using worsted weight yarn and size 8 knitting needles. In fact, Christine will show us how to make own needles. The Grade 1 students at the Waldorf schools are taught to make their own knitting needles. Supply cost for this project will be $10 including all materials.
Rachel and Christine are looking to gather long pine needles for basket weaving (Grade 9 curriculum) in February 2014. If you are planning a trip to the mountains, please help us bring back a bag or two of pine needles before the snow covers the ground. We need the dried needles that lay on the ground.
Hope to see you all next Tuesday!
Christine Newell’s Next Upcoming 16 inch Waldorf Doll Making workshops
October 15, 2013. Here is the latest flyer regarding Christine Newell’s Handmade Doll workshop:
Here are handmade 16 inch Waldorf Dolls made by Christine Newell.
Click here to see gorgeous photos from her past workshops.
Cost: $100 all materials included.
Waldorf School of Orange County, Wednesday mornings 9am to 11:30am:
Waldorf School of Orange County, Thursday evenings 6:30pm to 9:00pm:
- day 1 Oct 3rd, 2013
- day 2 Oct 10th, 2013
- day 3 Oct 17th, 2013
- day4 Oct 24th, 2013
Maple Village School, Long Beach, Thursdays mornings 9:30am to 12:00pm:
The purpose of doing consecutive workshop allows you to join any of the 3 workshop at any location and time, you just need to complete day 1 through 4 to have a completed doll.
- Sign up sheets will be in the WSOC Company of Angels and the Office of Maple Village School.
Recycled doll workshop:
Waldorf School of Orange County, 9:00am to 11:30am
Maple Village School, 9:30am to 12:00pm
- day 1 Oct 31st, 2013
- day 2 Nov 7th, 2013
Cost : $50 all materials included
Again you can join any location and time just need to complete days 1 and 2.
That’s all for now, looking forward to seeing you and sharing new crafts.
Support Our Local Waldorf Community/ Place a Free Ad
If you are interested in placing an ad on “Support Our Southern California Waldorf Community” (free if you are a member of Southern California Waldorf community) please e-mail me a good picture and a link.
Meanwhile, please support our local peeps! Thanks! – Jzin
Waldorf Seasons Table Dolls by Castle of Costa Mesa
Castle of Costa Mesa’s Etsy Store
You may support my crafting mania and justify my obsessive hoarding of craft supplies by shopping on my handmade Etsy store on the link below. Please do! – Jzin
Click on the image below to enter Castle of Costa Mesa Etsy store
Just for fun, click here instead view a gallery of my handmade dolls.
Castle of Costa Mesa Handmade Doll Giveaways
I give away my lovingly handmade dolls periodically. If you “Like” my Castle of Costa Mesa Facebook page, you will be notified of upcoming giveaways. Click here to view the list of my past giveaways. Perhaps the next winner could be YOU?
Our School Store Company of Angels has a Facebook page!
If you use Facebook, please “Like” our school store “The Company of Angels”. Also, please tell all your local facebook friends about our school store! Thank you!
Photos from Waldorf School of Orange County Craft Group