Free Needle Felting Tutorials on Youtube - 6 great online teachers to learn to felt at home
Want to learn how to felt at home? Here’s a curated list of 6 YouTube channels that offer free (high quality!) tutorials to help you with your needle felting.
YouTube can be a magical place full of knowledge. It can also be a frustrating spiral of searching through junky videos until you find good quality content. In the best needle felting tutorials:
The teachers are experts. You want teachers with a ton of experience to guide you, especially when you’re first learning so you can get good results fast.
The videos are edited. Two-hour unedited videos, no thank you! Good tutorials only show you what you need to see.
Make sure you do a project matched to your skill level so you have fun and want to keep learning. I ranked these channels in order from beginner to advanced.
PenFelt Studio - beginner felting mushrooms, gnomes, pizza and more
LeBrie Rich at PenFelt Studio provides needle felting tutorials for beginners. Gnomes, mushrooms, pizza and wet felting projects for kids are her specialties. With 15 years felting experience, she knows how to teach so you have maximum fun while learning foundational techniques.
Skill level: beginner
The Wishing Shed - nice designs for cute animals
Rachel at The Wishing Shed does a great job with her free animal needle felting and dollmaking tutorials. She has cute original designs, and she explains each step. The videos simple to follow, and you can also buy the written instructions/stencils on her website if you want an IRL guide.
Skill levels: beginner, intermediate
Mrs. Cute Felts - very thorough tutorials for beginners
Mrs. Cute Felts makes it her job to educate her followers about felting techniques, and she covers every detail. If you want to get really into the details of felting, her videos have good lighting and show each step very clearly.
skill level: beginner, intermediate
Felts by Phillipa - timelapses and tutorials of farm animals
Philippa has a large library of felting videos, from beginner projects to complicated tutorials. I especially love her time lapse videos because you can learn how she approaches a large project without slogging through hours of footage. Highly recommend if you have some felting skills and are ready to try realistic animals.
Skill level: beginner to advanced
Sarafina Fiber Art - large sculptural animal projects
Sara Renzulli is the creative force behind Sarafina Fiber Art. Her videos are known for highly detailed animal sculptures that are rather large - usually over 1 foot tall. She has many practical techniques, so you can learn so much by watching work with armature and blending fibers. She often blends needle felting and wet felting in one project, which is unusual.
Skill level: advanced
Wakuneko - Japanese cat pet portraits
These cats look so real! Watching the time lapse videos provide so much information about how to manipulate wool fibers to make these pet portraits. There is so much subtlety in this work; this is the true deep dive for a master felter.
Skill level: super advanced