After fulling, I wanted to see how far I could push wool’s surface — how it could hold shape, depth, and even emotion.
As a designer, I’ve always been fascinated by the point where fabric stops being just fabric and starts becoming sculpture. That curiosity led me to needle felting, a process that gave me the freedom to draw, shape, and build directly onto the cloth — no stitching, no adhesive, just fibre binding to fibre.
Discovering Dimension Through Touch
Needle felting works through repetition. By piercing the surface with fine barbed needles, the wool fibres interlock and compress, forming dense, raised areas that can be sculpted like clay. I experimented on both woven and knitted wool, layering textures and volumes until the fabric almost began to breathe on its own.
There’s something meditative about this technique — the steady rhythm of the needle, the gradual emergence of form. The more I worked, the more the material revealed its capacity to hold memory. Wool became not just a textile, but a record of gesture and pressure.
Fancy Yarn Knitted Tweed - Blue
Function and Form in Harmony
What began as decoration soon became construction. I realised I could use felting to stabilise pleats, join panels, and even replace stitching altogether.
By applying felted seams along the inside of garments, I created smooth transitions and invisible joins — a way of fusing pieces together without interrupting the flow of the silhouette.
It was an unconventional approach, but it made sense. Felting allowed me to merge technique with expression, structure with softness.
What I Learned
Through this process, I found that wool responds beautifully to intuition. It rewards curiosity. It allows you to build without boundaries — to move between craft, design, and art with fluid ease.
Working with wool reminded me that innovation doesn’t always come from new materials, but from seeing the familiar differently. Sometimes, the most traditional fibres have the most modern stories to tell.
Next in the series: Episode 4 — From Studio to Collection | The Fabric of Modern Craft.
