Needle Felting with Jacob Wool
When I began my Needle Felting Through the Sheep Breeds series, I was trying to answer a question I had been asked many times:
What breed of wool is best for needle felting?
At that point, most of my experience had been with Romney wool because that was the wool readily available to me from our own sheep.
I loved working with Romney, but I realized that saying it was my favorite wasn't much of a comparison if I hadn't seriously tried many other breeds.
So I began an experiment.
I would take wool from a particular breed of sheep and use it to needle felt a sculpture of that same breed.
Along the way, I learned not only about different sheep breeds, but also something even more important:
The breed name doesn't tell you everything about how a fleece will felt.
Jacob wool gave me one of my best lessons in that.
A Little About Jacob Sheep
Jacob sheep are one of those breeds you don't easily forget once you've seen them.
They are usually piebald, meaning they have patches of white and darker color, and they can also be polycerate, meaning they may grow more than two horns.
Some have two horns, while others may have four or even more, giving them a very distinctive appearance.
Both rams and ewes can be horned, although the horns generally look quite different between the sexes.
Their spotted fleeces also provide some wonderful natural colors for fiber artists—whites, grays, browns, and blacks without needing to dye the wool.
For someone who loves sculpting realistic animals, that immediately caught my attention.
Jacob Wool Can Vary Quite a Bit
One of the most important things I learned while researching Jacob sheep was how much their fleece characteristics can vary.
That turned out to be especially important when I began felting.
The Jacob wool I had purchased included white, gray, and black fiber, and I was excited to create a sheep using the animal's own natural colors.
My excitement faded pretty quickly once I started working with the white.
My Experience Needle Felting With Jacob Wool
The white wool I received felt quite coarse to me, and my felting needle didn't seem to grab and move the fibers as easily as I was accustomed to.
I experimented with different needles and had the best results with a 36-gauge needle, but even then it took considerably more work to make the wool firm.
The detailed areas of the face were especially frustrating.
I could eventually make the wool solid, but it required a lot more poking than I was used to.
And then I started adding the darker wool.
The Black Wool Was Different Again
The black Jacob wool in my batch felt somewhat finer than the white, but it also contained very coarse, long fibers.
Those fibers did not want to felt into the sculpture at all.
I found myself picking them out before and during the felting process because they continued sticking out of the surface.
Thankfully, I only needed the black wool for the markings on the sheep.
By the time the sculpture was finished, I had a very solid sheep—but I was also physically tired from the extra work it took to get there.
But Was That Really a Fair Test of Jacob Wool?
This is where the experiment became more interesting.
Other people who had worked with Jacob wool told me that their fiber wasn't nearly as difficult to felt.
That didn't surprise me.
From working with wool from our own sheep, I already knew that fleece can vary from one animal to another.
Add differences in age, genetics, fleece quality, individual sheep, and the way the fiber is processed, and two bags labeled Jacob wool may not behave exactly alike.
So rather than concluding that Jacob wool simply doesn't felt well, I came away thinking:
I would need to try more than one Jacob fleece before making that judgment.
What I Would Do Differently Today
If I were buying Jacob wool specifically for three-dimensional needle felting, I would either handle it in person first or purchase a small amount to test before buying a large quantity.
I would look for fiber that:
- Doesn't contain a lot of very coarse hairs
- Feels springy rather than slick
- Grabs together easily when rubbed or pulled between my fingers
- Has been prepared in a way that works well for sculptural felting
Those beautiful natural Jacob colors would absolutely tempt me to try again.
I'd just want to know a little more about the particular fleece first.
What I Like About Jacob Wool
The natural color possibilities are probably my favorite part.
A single breed can provide beautiful whites, grays, browns, and blacks that are wonderful for realistic animals.
The wool I worked with also became quite firm once I finally got it felted.
And while that particular batch wasn't my favorite for needle felting, I enjoyed using the remaining fiber for spinning.
Sometimes a fiber that isn't ideal for one purpose is wonderful for another.
What I Found Challenging
With the particular Jacob wool I tested:
- Felting took considerably longer than I was accustomed to
- The white wool felt coarse
- Some of the dark wool contained very long, coarse fibers
- Fine facial details were more difficult
- I needed a more aggressive needle to get the results I wanted
But I want to emphasize that those observations apply to the wool I tested, not every Jacob fleece.
That's an important distinction.
Thank you to Ruby Peak Farms for the beautiful pictures of their flock of Jacob Sheep!
Is Jacob Wool Good for Needle Felting?
My answer today would be:
It can be—but I would pay attention to the individual fleece and fiber preparation rather than buying it based on breed name alone.
My first Jacob experience wasn't an easy one, but it taught me something that has become one of the biggest lessons from this entire series.
There is tremendous variation in wool.
Breed matters.
But so do the individual sheep, the fleece, and the way that wool reaches your felting table.
That is why I no longer think there is one simple answer to the question, “What breed of wool is best for needle felting?”
And that's exactly what makes experimenting with wool so interesting.
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