Let Me Introduce You To My Hedgedog. Wait? What?

Hey all! It's been a while. I've been busy working on some hobbies and haven't had much time to blog. However, speaking of hobbies, I thought it was time for me to share with you all one of my new favorite hobbies. Needle felting!!!


Now these pictures are from last year, and I have sadly worked through all my sets, but I plan to get more around the holiday time to do. Right now I just have too much on my plate, but I wanted to share my first silly attempts.

So the first set I purchased was the Dimensions Hedgehog Needle Felt Character Kit. I read everywhere that it would be easy, so I thought 'why not', and I ordered it. This is what it looked like fresh out of the package. He was too cute to pass up.

Well, after I got everything laid out and started

looking at things, I began to think this wasn't going to go so smoothly as I thought. I had read in the comments on Amazon that the set had some rust colored debris in the wool, and some said they didn't have that, so I took a chance on it. When I opened my wool, I was sad to see mine had the debris, but I decided to go ahead and do the set. I figured once it was all together you wouldn't notice it. So this is what I got in the package. The reason I got this set is because you got everything you needed to complete the set, which I felt was a plus. So you get a felting needle, you have to use felting needles because they have barbs on them that help entangle the wool. You get a bag of wool that is 'suppose' to complete the full project...more on that later. You get the thread to create the mouth and lines on the hedgehog. You get black plastic eyes, I believe you get four just in case you lose one. And the little white mat is your felting mat. Then of course you get the instructions. I was ready to start.

So, I started with the body first, and I think this is where I really felt this set was going to let me down. I did as the instructions said, but I never ended up with a body that said I should. I was suppose to felt until the body was firm and formed the shape suggested in the instructions. I got the length but not the width. I thought maybe after I got the brown on it would look different. Not so much. In all fairness to myself, this was one of my first attempts at doing needle felting, I believe I did this one last or second to last out of my sets. I think what I learned was to be more sparing with the wool, you don't have to use everything given to you. Instead of a hedgehog, I got a hedgedog. Hummmm....well...he is cute. Maybe even cuter than the hedgehog. LOL!

So, would I recommend this set? Yes and no. First of all, the rust particles on the wool were just disgusting. I felt that the wool was not properly cleaned. It made the finished product look dirty to me. However, besides the particles, perhaps if I had

more experience I would have been able to get a better shaped hedgehog. I wouldn't follow the instructions given to me about the size. I feel that the body would have turned out better following the picture for sizing rather than the instructions suggestions. A lot of the wool used in the legs could have gone to the body. I would use less wool than what I did use because those ears are massive and I didn't have any left over for the nose so I had to felt some black in for the nose. I would also take more time to form things and build up rather than grab a hunk of wool and go at it. Now, if you have more experience with needle felting I say go for it, but if you are new to it, I would say get something with less colors and pieces to deal with. Something that has more big pieces to connect together would be better too. There are some sets by Dimensions that I want to try, like their fox, and I honestly want to get this set again and try it again. So that may be a future post on me trying to get a hedgehog to form from the set.. Until then, I have Snuffles The Mighty Hedgedog...I came up with that just now, it's a working name in progress. LOL!

So tell me, have you tried needle felting before? Do you like it? I like it. It's fun to do. I had to wuss out and get finger and thumb guards. I have 'stabbed' myself with the needle, but the guards got the pokes instead of me. What can I say? I don't like pain, and I sure as heck don't want a barbed needle poking into my finger. Sure you can do it without them and just protect your fingers by how you position the wool and always know where your fingers are, but I just felt safer with the guards. Never be embarrassed by protecting yourself while crafting people. :-) If you have pictures of your needle felting crafts feel free to link to them below, I'd love to see them. I have pictures of my other sets I did that I will post about later. Spoiler alert, they all suffered a similar fate to Snuffles The Mighty Hedgedog, you'll want to check back for those gems. LOL! And on that note, I will talk to you awesome people later. Take care until then. Bye for now. :-)

Love always,
Michelle