Book Review: 2 Adorable Needle Felting Books You’ll Love

I have quite a collection of Japanese needle felting books bought mainly on my various trips to Japan and Hong Kong. They are always full of impossibly cute characters, and flicking through them inspires me to get my needles out and create my own little designs.

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Because I don’t read Japanese I’ve always had to just use the pictures and diagrams as a guide, so when Tuttle Publishing sent me some translated needle felting books I was keen to gain some extra insight from the English instructions.

Today I’m sharing my thoughts on two books with you – Adorable Felted Animals and It’s a Small World Felted Friends.

Both are presented in a classic Japanese craft book style with all the finished project images in the front half of the book and the instructions for each project in the back end. There are plenty of diagrams to follow with multiple views of the finished pieces, and I really appreciate the instructions include ‘actual size’ shape template sketches so you can compare your piece to the template as you are working.

Step-by-step instructions from Adorable Felted Animal Friends

I must say I love how beautifully styled the photography is in both these books, it really brings the characters to life.

I noticed that both the books use a kind of semi felted wool sheet material that isn’t readily available in Australia (it’s hard to get any needle felting supplies here). It gives a really smooth and neat finish which I’ve found hard to replicate with the wool roving I have in my stash.

In saying that it’s not impossible to get the same smooth finish. It just takes a little more time to felt as you need to start from scratch.

I made a Budgie from Adorable Felted Animals, and was pretty happy with it for my first try. It could use some heavier felting (and a finer needle) to firm it up and get a cleaner finish, but all in all, he turned out cute.

Read on to find out more about each book.

Adorable Felted Animals

This book features 30 animal projects which include various breeds of dogs and cats, birds, rabbits and even ferrets. It’s incredible how lifelike the little animals in this book look, I suppose because wool is great at mimicking a fur texture.

I’d recommend this book for someone that has a little bit of basic experience with needle felting already. Even though the instructions are very clear, some preexisting knowledge is required to really get the animals to look lifelike. It’s always trickier making a realistic sculpted piece as opposed to a more stylized, cartoonish design.

Adorable Felted Animals
By Gakken Handmade
Publisher – Tuttle Publishing
ISBN 9784805313589
Published Aug 2015
Paperback

Purchase from Amazon here – Purchase from Book Depository here

It’s a Small World Felted Friends

This book contains designs for little figurines themed by countries from around the world. As well as animals, it includes mini landscape vignettes, landmarks and food. There are also instructions for creating key ring charms from the designs.

The designs vary in difficulty and there are plenty of great pieces that beginners could make easily. This is a great book to introduce you to needle felting if you are a beginner, as it contains many projects that can really build your confidence and skill levels.

It’s a Small World Felted Friends
By Sachiko Susa
Publisher – Tuttle Publishing
ISBN 9784805314364
Published March 2017
Paperback

Purchase from Amazon here – Purchase from Book Depository here

Are you curious about needle felting? I’ve explained how it works in this blog post – Needle Felting Basics

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This post contains affiliate links. The featured books were supplied by the publisher for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own.