Needle-Felted Zombie Rabbit

When Jake first discovered music and did the whole teenage band thing my once-lovely ceramics studio got overrun with a seemingly never-ending selection of guitars, amps, drum kits, microphone stands and assorted heavy metal paraphernalia. Faced with the knowledge that clay does not mix well with soft furnishings - or food for that matter - I packed away my glazes and looked around for another material that could be used in the house to create 3D objects while minimising the mess factor. Enter needle felting and I was up and running. 

I don’t sew or knit - though I can, sort of - so I’d never really considered anything textile related, but hey, I’ll try anything once, so having bought a starter pack from eBay (always my default setting for purchasing new craft materials until I find a reliable supplier), I began to look round the net for inspiration.

While there are some very talented people out there, the proliferation of needle felted teddies and cute critters weren’t really my cup of tea........

The Zombit (or Zombunny, if you prefer) was one of my earliest creations. He was inspired by a character in a book called Zombie Felties - a collection of hand sewn felted creations. I made him bigger, kept the bits I liked (the rough facial features and the overall body shape) and reworked the bits I didn’t like (the arms and ears) and he's much larger than the original. I think he’s rather sweet in an undead sort of way.

Those of you who have already tried needle felting won't need a tutorial and those of you who haven't, but want to, can easily find beginners tutorials via Google. Basically though, needle felting just involves jabbing balls of dyed wool fibre (also called wool tops or rovings) with a special barbed felting needle which catches the wool fibres and magically turns them into felt. And all that stabbing is extremely therapeutic, especially after a bad day at work.

Zombit's features were added on after I'd finished constructing the body and head. His claws are black beads, stitched on with a very fine beading needle and black thread; the tiny droplets of blood at the side of the mouth and below the intestines are also beads. The teeth are felted, then stitched around with embroidery thread. To make the intestines I took a loose bundle of embroidery thread in various shades of red and stitched them into a slit cut into Zombit's belly with sharp scissors. I also cut bite marks into his ears and added some extra blood in the form of small quantities of red wool fibre and he has a cute white pom-pom tail too.

Several friends have requested one, so I can easily post a tutorial if anyone wants me to do so. The finished product won't be exactly the same as this one as I make a point of never doing the same thing twice, but it'll be close enough.