Needle Felted Wool Skirt

I’ve had an antique creamy wool petticoat since I was in college. It has a lovely wool “lace” hem, fitted waist with a nice A-line shape.  I loved it in college with hiking boots and I love it now with little booties. However, after around 25 years it was time to change it up! I have a batch of beautiful wool roving that is perfect for felting…… wool skirt + wool roving = ‘new’ needle felted skirt!

To begin, I needed some inspiration for a design and turned to my Inspiration Book for an idea. The collage below really caught my attention – the green vines on the cabinet have a beautiful organic feel as well as the circular shape of the hole in the window (look at the images at the tip of each pencil).

I decided my skirt would have ‘flower’ circles of swirled wools in 2 sizes “growing” on a vine. This was a truly organic design where I felted the vines and then added the ‘flowers’ one at a time wherever it felt right. I used a cluster needle handle with 5 felting needles piercing the fabric together. If you would like to see a short tutorial of how I needle felted please go to my “Tutorial” page in the top menu.

Here is the finished skirt (I love the results, and it appears other people do too because I get a lot of compliments when I wear this thing!):

The initial roving colors I’d chosen were gorgeous charcoal greys, mossy greens, beige, black and a rich blue. I liked it but something was missing and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Since it was fall my husband and I went for a hike in the Berkshires and stopped at a favorite viewpoint. There in front of us was a hill alive with autumn color and it hit me – the missing piece – the skirt needed some brilliant orange-red roving added to some of the ‘flowers’.  Just what it needed!

Here are 2 nice close-ups of two of my favorite ‘flowers’ on the skirt – I absolutely love the movement of the grays, blues, brown and orange on the top and the interplay of the grays, yellows, moss green and hint of blue on the bottom:

Here are some closeups of other felted ‘flowers’:

You can see in the pictures that I finished off the needlework by adding free-sewn lines using my sewing machine.

And here is the back of the skirt: I kept the design at a minimum and added a set of beautiful metal filigree antique buttons from my button collection.