Needle Felting With Icelandic Wool, Would I recommend it?
When I started my Needle Felting Through the Sheep Breeds series, I wanted to answer a question I had been asked over and over:
What breed of wool is best for needle felting?
Romney had always been my favorite, but it was also the wool I knew best. I wanted to try other breeds for myself and see how they actually behaved under a felting needle.
For each experiment, I used wool from a particular breed to create a sheep and paid attention to the things that matter most to me as a sculptural needle felter:
How quickly does it felt?
How firm can I make it?
What is the surface like?
Does the fiber help me—or fight me?
This time I worked with Icelandic wool, and it turned out to be especially interesting because an Icelandic fleece contains two very different types of fiber.
A Little About Icelandic Sheep
Icelandic sheep are an old northern breed known for producing meat, milk, and wool.
They also come in a wonderful range of natural colors and patterns—from white and cream through grays, browns, and deep blacks.
For someone who loves creating realistic animals, that natural color variation is a huge advantage.
But what really makes Icelandic wool different is the fleece itself.
One Fleece, Two Coats
Icelandic sheep have a dual coat.
The softer undercoat is called thel.
The longer, coarser outer fiber is called tog.
Those two fibers grow together in the fleece, but they behave very differently.
Traditionally, they can be separated and used for different purposes. They can also be processed together.
For needle felting, that distinction turned out to matter quite a lot.
My First Experience Felting Icelandic Wool
The Icelandic fiber I worked with contained both the thel and the tog.
Almost immediately, I noticed the long outer fibers.
They did not want to disappear into my sculpture the way I wanted them to.
As I felted, some of the longer, coarser fibers continued sticking out from the surface, so I found myself pulling them out as I worked.
If you've read other articles in this series, you already know this isn't my favorite thing.
For the firm, fairly smooth sculptures I create, I prefer wool that felts into the surface rather than leaving long fibers sticking out everywhere.
The Thel Was a Completely Different Story
The soft undercoat was wonderful.
Once I paid attention to the difference between the two fibers, I realized that the thel itself felted beautifully.
In fact, I liked it enough that I thought it could compete with some of my favorite wool for felting.
It was the mixture with the long tog that made the overall fiber more difficult for the kind of sculpture I was making.
That changed my opinion of Icelandic wool completely.
Instead of saying, “Icelandic isn't great for needle felting,” I would now say:
Know which part of the Icelandic fleece you're buying.
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