"Students don’t need prior experience to learn and enjoy the process of needle felting. Each student receives a needle felting pad made of dense foam, a rectangle of raw silk, a piece of commercial felt as a backing for the raw silk, a felting barb, and as much merino wool as they would like to use. If the class concentrates on felted landscapes, students will provide their own landscape photos to use as inspiration or borrow a photo from Diane. If the class focuses on felted pet portraits, students will work from photos of their pets.

In either type of class, students will trace or draw their chosen scenes or pet portraits onto the raw silk, then use the soft merino wool as if it were paint, applying it to the background of raw silk with a felting barb. The barb has a series of tiny sharp notches that catch onto tiny, microscopic scales in the wool, similar to those of a pine cone. When the wool latches onto the notches on the barb, it is pushed through the background, adhering to it.  In this way, the students create glorious felted landscapes or textured pet portraits, which they may embellish with hand embroidery or shiny Angelina fibers for glitz. At the end of the class, each student will have prepared a work of art suitable for framing." -- Diane Cadrain