How to Make Needle Felted Leeks
What better way to celebrate St David's Day than by creating these adorable needle felted leeks! Did you know the leek is a national symbol of Wales? They don't get much cuter than this.
It's a great felting project for beginners, so if you've always wanted to give it a go, here is the perfect opportunity. Follow along with the steps below and put your needle felting skills into practice.
You will need
To make one leek:
* Natural Wool Roving 10g - White (x2), Pistachio, Grass Green, Powder Pink and Black
* Felting Needles
* Needle Felting Brush
Using the white roving wool, unravel and split this in half along the length. Fold one strand in half.
To make the main part of the leek, roll the bottom half (the folded section) into a long sausage shape and felt all over evenly.
Use a stabbing motion with the needle until firm. Continuously rotate your work so that you can stab all areas.
Keep one end unworked and fluffy.
Work the fluffy ends into two flat rectangular leaf shapes - add white roving wool to bulk up the leaf if necessary.
Using the pistachio green roving wool, layer on both sides of the white leaf. Concentrate most of the wool to make a darker tip of the leaf and gradually going from green to white at the bottom (to create an ombre effect).
Taking separate chunks of the remaining white roving wool, create three additional flat leaf shapes.
Felt until a rectangular shape is made with a fluffy end.
Using the pistachio green roving wool, layer on both sides of the white leaves.
Concentrate most of the wool to make a darker tip of the leaf. Create an ombre effect by gradually going from green to white at the bottom.
Using the grass green roving wool, layer on both sides of the leaves.
Felt halfway down the leaves - again, blending at the bottom to make a natural ombre effect.
Once all the additional leaves are completed, attach by felting the white bottom of the leaf onto the main leek shape.
Make sure the leaves are evenly distributed.
Now it's time to bring your leek to life by adding facial features! Play around with eye and mouth shapes to make other adorable expressions.
Using a tiny amount of black roving wool, you could either make two small round eyes or one round eye and one '>' shape (to make a winking eye).
Using the needle, attach these onto the bottom white part of the leek.