Crafting is the perfect way to unwind from a long day, escape your worries, and find your inner creativity. Unfortunately, a lot of crafting hobbies and supplies cause more harm than good. Art and craft products such as acrylic paint, glitter, and many types of glues can be highly toxic. These toxic products can not only harm us and our loved ones, but also the environment.
If you’re looking for an eco-friendly crafting hobby, it’s time to try needle felting!
Here’s how needle felting is sustainable and why Bear Creek Felting is a great choice for your needle-felting materials!
Wool is a natural fiber grown by sheep that covers most of their body. Our 125 sheep at Bear Creek 
Felting produce around 1,000 pounds of wool per year. The process of shearing sheep wool is completely harmless for the sheep. In fact, removing the wool during warmer months helps the sheep to stay cool during the days! As the months go by, the wool regrows just in time for cooler weather.
At Bear Creek Felting, our sheep are well cared for. They provide us with premium quality wool, which we produce and clean in our own mill. During our cleaning stage, we stay away from harsh chemicals, keeping the wool and the environment free of toxins.
The beauty about needle felting is that you can easily create beautiful sculptures with wool and just a few simple materials. There’s no need to glue or paint anything; you simply take your wool and needles and start crafting!
Of course, having the right colors help to bring your artwork to life. So, we color some of our wool in a range of colors, using only eco-friendly dyes, to add more variety. This variety allows you much room to add accents and details to your sculpture.
If you’re familiar with felting, you probably know that some use foam (polyurethane) as a surface to work on. This type of material, though versatile, has a high carbon footprint and since they wear out after a couple projects go to fill up Landfills. To help eliminate this problem, we make all-natural felting cushions from our wool! They are an awesome alternative to foam felting cushions that will last a lifetime, the wool is raised and processed right here on our farm and mill.
Ways We Use Our Wool
Obviously, we love to use our wool to make needle-felted sculptures, but wool can be used in many ways! Different types of wool are good for different items. We also raise Cormo sheep, Alpaca and Angora Rabbits and use their fiber to produce m
any different yarn blends, insoles, coasters, bags and pillows.
We believe in reducing waste whenever possible, so all the extra wool our sheep produce is always recycled. This extra wool is used in our cushions (which we sell as alternatives to foam felting cushions) and insoles (an eco-friendly alternative to the typical foam material) and Felted Fertilizer. We’re doing our part to reduce waste and help the planet — sheep by sheep!
As part of our commitment to maintaining a sustainable environment and providing all-natural products, we raise our own sheep and process their wool in our mill. We use every bit of the wool we produce and everything is designed to be as non-toxic and zero-waste as possible, so that you can feel good about taking up needle-felting!
Join our crafting revolution and help us go zero-waste. Check out our Academy to start your needle-felting journey, or shop our felting kits.
Other Articles you may enjoy:
Learn to Needle Felt the Easy Way!
Join the Bear Creek Needle Felting Academy today!
Yes Yes! Spread this message to all. Small producers and shepherdess and local mills and fiber artisans can do good things for their animals and their communities. Can’t wait to share my prototypes and hybrids of needling with embroidering! lovelovelove Bearcreek roving (romney red my all time favorite, northern lights number two — no one in the world has any better than these two colors) and DakotaFiberMill Felt the most amazing felt I have every met in my almost 60 years of fiber and making.
Thank you Jane!