Goodbye Summer . . . A Felted Sea Turtle.

I’ve decided to make 7 creatures for this ocean themed collection.  And here they all are side by side.  Each one has a sweet face and a soft felty body.  In the end, I needle felted the following toys, in order: a”rainbow fish”, an angelfish, an octopus, a crab, a beluga whale, a blowfish and a sea turtle.  Each felted toy took about three to five hours to complete and they are roughly three to five inches long. That’s an hour for an inch of length.  So that is roughly 28 hours of labor right there.  Blood, sweat, tears, the usual- all went into those little cuties.  That’s kindof gross, but you get the idea.  I sat on the sofa, poke, poke, a glance up to see what was happening on my soap, and then poke some more; until,  I had a ocean menagerie of my very own.  It was so much fun to create these and in the end I got to see my husband and kids oww and aww over them.

Today, I’m sharing with everyone the very last felted creation for my farewell to summer, “Ocean Collection”.  It’s a  Sea Turtle!  I just love this little guy.  He is probably my favorite animal in this collection; his head and fins have these bold black markings while the green shell is understated in comparison.  The color contrast is very appealing!  Just look in the center of the picture below; he is the little guy leading the ocean parade.

Here are two very leggy ocean creatures.  An octopus and a crab.  Eighteen legs combined on those little guys.  I have a rather large family and together my family only has fourteen legs.  If you’d like to see how to attach so many legs on a felt creation, check out this previous post on my little crab.

There are three fish.  All swimming in a row.  Who knew that “rainbowfish”, angelfish, and blowfish schooled together.  When you have an imagination they can and maybe a tiny beluga whale can join them; or a crab or a sea turtle!  The sea’s the limit.

And the final picture is of my two favorite creatures from this collection:  the “rainbow fish” and the sea turtle.  The very first creation and the very last.  I hope you enjoyed this adventure from felted”rainbow fish” to felted sea turtle with me.  It has been quite a journey; feel free to reminisce on the hot, balmy, beachy days while perusing my past few posts.  Goodbye Summer!

A Felted Blowfish?

A blowfish, pufferfish, balloonfish, bubblefish: should I continue?  This little creature is SUPPOSED to resemble a blowfish.  I’m not sure if I was successful in that; however, this felt toy does have a cute factor.

When I finished this toy, I showed it to my children and had them guess what it was.  My son guessed a starfish; to be fair, I don’t think he has ever seen a blowfish.  My oldest daughter said “pufferfish”!  At that moment, I thought “SUCCESS!”.  That moment was short lived when she began instantaneously telling me other creatures it could be, for instance a porcupine.  The truth is creating felt toys is all about imagination and this little toy can be anything you want it to be!

I have fond memories of visiting my grandfather who lived awful close to the Florida beach; he had a “skeleton” of a pufferfish sitting on his dining table.  I loved to pick it up and inspect it carefully.  Making this toy for my ocean collection reminded me of sitting at that table with my grandad next to me and him pulling out sea relics that he had collected over the years.  Shark skin, fish skulls, shark skulls, seashells and this pufferfish “skeleton” were among the things he shared with me.  And now I’m sharing it with you in a much softer, sweeter, toy version!  I hope you enjoyed my felted blowfish, pufferfish, balloonfish–you get the picture!

A Needle Felted Beluga Whale . . . Smile!

To continue with my ocean collection, I’m showing you my newest addition today-a felted beluga whale!  Yes, yes I know belugas are never seen on a warm, sandy beach, but I couldn’t resist trying my hand at this arctic cutie.  So here he is all bright white and happy.

Beluga means “white one” in Russian and this little toy is all white indeed.  Only the adults are all white; the babies are a brownish-gray.  The beluga is also called a sea canary because they make pretty noises under the water.  The big lump on their head is what they use to make these sounds.  This lumpy mass changes shape as they make different noises.

I never really got why everybody is gaga over the beluga whales, but I suppose it is because they constantly appear to be smiling.  This little beluga won me over and now I’m a fan; hopefully this little beluga toy has won your heart as well.

Legs, legs, legs . . . How to Attach Legs

I made a crab for my ocean collection today, and I’m going to take this opportunity to show everyone how I attach limbs to my creations.  After all, a crab has 8 legs and two pinchers and I couldn’t think of a better creature to demonstrate this.

When constructing limbs, the side that will be attached is left unfinished as seen below with the leg and pincher.  This is so there is something there to easily felt onto the body.

When attaching the limb, grab it and spread the unfinished side out a little bit and then position it onto the body.  Also I prefer to attach limbs to the core body rather than the finished body. So as you can see, my body is obviously going to be needing a main color added afterwards.  (I used scrap bits of wool to construct the core body seen here.)Using a rather large diameter needle, felt the loose end onto the body. Just get the limb loosely attached during this process, so that if need be repositioning the limb can be done later.

Continue to place the additional limbs, pinchers, fins, whatever you’re attaching; spread the unfinished side and needle felt. My crab is getting more and more legs as we go.

Keep going in my case, being that it’s a crab.  They beat a spider and octopus with those pinchers included!

Now that all the limbs are attached, it is time to check the position of each one.  If one needs to be repositioned you will be happy that you didn’t extensively felt the limbs into place in the first go round.  Now that the positions are correct, make the connections stronger by needle felting around the base of the limbs some more.

Once the connections are strong, it is time to add the main color to the body.  I like to do this bit after limb attachment because I feel the extra layer adds more strength to the limb connections.  Hopefully, this will create a strong enough bond that little ones won’t pull the limbs off one after another. So, carefully wrap the wool around the body and over the bits of limbs used for attachment purposes, then needle felt it into place.

After the limbs are attached, further decorations and embellishments can be added if need be.  In this instance,  I needle felted some “googly eyes” and created a soft smile on the crab’s face.  Now the felted toy is ready for play.  I enjoyed making this soft little crab.  He is such a softie.  If my instructions were unclear, just let me know and I can clarify.  Hope I helped. Happy Felting!