The thing I love best about teddy bears (and their friends!) is the connection I feel on an emotional level between myself and the critter. One gaze into those beautiful eyes and my heartstrings sing. Needle felting can create expression on your bear that you simply cannot get with glass eyes. The technique is simple to learn and can be used on critters made from faux fur, wool, mohair, fleece, and many other fabrics. The cost of getting started with needle felting is relatively low as well. Many artisans sell bundles of unspun fibers called roving on websites like Etsy for around $2.75 an ounce. A quick Google search for hand-dyed roving will give you many options to choose from. I like to use roving that is variegated in shades and colors, because it already has built-in depth and emotional overtones, depending on the colors I choose. Another fantastic place to get a variety of fibers is a sheep-and-wool festival. Look for one near you in the spring. The needle-felting tools you need depend on the fabrics that you use. Many of my creations are made from wool, so I can use a 36-gauge needle without a problem. When I work with mohair or faux fur, I have to use a finer needle, 38-gauge, because of the fabric backing. The higher the gauge, the finer the needle: for our kind of work, we’ll choose needles from 32 to 42 gauge. Felting needles also come in two different shapes: triangle and star. The shape refers to how many “cuts” or “barbs” are on the needle itself; three cuts for a triangle, five for a star. These cuts are what catch the wool fibers when you push the needle into your fabric surface. I also highly recommend a Clover, a multi-needle tool. Believe me, the final felting goes much faster with a multi-needle tool!

To begin felting eyes, gather the fibers you want to work with. I use white merino for the white of the eye and the highlights, and yak down in a deep brown for the pupils. Black pupils most of the time seem too stark for me. I use black only occasionally, and very sparingly. These are just suggestions; you will find your own preferences as you experiment. To easily add lashes to eyes, use Llama guard hairs. You can get them rather cheap as the guard hairs are considered waste by most roving/yarn producers.

Don’t be scared to try needle felting because you think you won’t be able to keep both eyes the same size. I have a few tricks for that! First, try working with both eyes at the same time: felt the white of one eye, and then the white of the other, before moving on to the iris color. If that doesn’t work, draw the shape and size of the eye you want on a piece of Pellon Tru-Grid-—it feels like iron-on interfacing, but without the glue. Fold the Tru-Grid over on itself and then trace your drawing for the other eye. Cut the two shapes out at just a hair smaller than your drawings. Put just a dab of tacky glue on the back of the eye stencils and place them where you want on your critter. You can needle-felt right on top of the Tru-Grid. If you are working with a fabric that has a smooth surface, draw your eye-shapes directly on the fabric with an air-erasable marker and a coin as a stencil. Don’t give up! Practice makes perfect.

Now that we have all our tools, fibers, and some tricks up our sleeves, let’s get started.



Pull a small amount roving from the roll. How much?  The eyes I’m making will be the size of a nickel—7/16” or 2 cm in diameter. So I pull enough roving so that when I roll it up to make a loose little sausage shape (Photo 1), and then fold each end of the sausage in toward the center (Photo 2), I have a neat, fairly dense ball about the diameter of a nickel (Photo 3). Obviously the amount you start with will vary with different fibers and different-sized projects. Experiment.

Place the rolled-and-folded wool where you want it on the bear’s face and hold it down with your thumb (Photo 4). Carefully tack around the edge of the wool with your felting needle—only the edge at first. Keep the needle pointing straight out from the wool and fabric. If you angle the needle it is likely to break. When you are happy with the shape and size of the eye, do the other one (Photo 5). Do you like how they look on your critter? Are the eyes reasonably close in shape and size? Good! Using your felting needle, continue felting the whites of the eyes in a spiral motion, working from the edge toward the inside. Use the multi-needle tool to felt the eye flat (Photo 6).



For the iris, pull a smaller amount of colored roving. Again, roll it into a sausage and fold its ends in. I want a relatively large iris, so my fiber ball will be about the size of a penny, 1/2” or 1.8 cm in diameter. Needle-felt the edges just like you did for the whites of the eyes. Needle-felt the other eye, and then check to make sure they look the same (Photo 7). Yes? Needle-felt using the spiral motion and then the multi-needle tool.

The pupil is done in the same manner as the white and iris. Use your multi-needle tool before adding the highlights to the eyes. When needle-felting the highlights in the eye, remember that light hits the eyes from the same direction, so the highlights will be on the same side for both eyes (Photo 8). Looking in a mirror to see how light reflects in your own eyes is helpful. Use a very little amount of the white for the highlights. These take some practice, as the roving likes to disappear when felting such a small amount. Add some darkness at corners and on the outside edge using the yak down.

It takes a little practice, but needle felting lets you make beautiful, expressive, child-safe eyes at a fraction of the cost of conventional glass ones—bonus!

Jennifer Carson is an animal and fantasy-creature designer living in New Hampshire. She has designed over thirty-five patterns, including characters from her children’s book, “To Find A Wonder.” You can learn more about Jennifer and browse her patterns and hand-dyed supplies on her website, www.thedragoncharmer.com.