What do vegetables, animals and folklore creatures all have in common? They are all concepts that Michaal Fletcher has brought to life using her needle felt skills. Jessica Cornish caught up with the talented artist from the online store, Michaalf, one Sunday afternoon to learn about Michaal’s unexpected journey into the world of needle felting. Picture: Ben Gross
THREE years ago, Michaal Fletcher was exploring a small shop in Wentworth, Ruby’s Cargo to be exact.
Sifting through their collection of handcrafted pieces made by local Sunraysia residents, Michaal came across a small needle felted piece that she was instantly drawn to.
“They had this little mushroom that was made of needle felt, and I wanted to buy it but mum said, ‘you’re not buying it, it’s too expensive,’ I thought I couldn’t afford it, so I’ll try and make it myself,” she recalls.
“I went home and Googled how to needle felt; got the technique and it went from there.”
Downplaying the difficulties of learning a new skill as an adult, Michaal admitted that needle felting came very naturally to her.
YouTube was able to provide the basics of the technique, however there was limited information explaining the shaping component of the art form.
Despite the knowledge gap she found she was quickly able to mould the wool into any desired form.
It’s not surprising Michaal was able to quickly master needle felting.
Growing up, she was a talented child who spent a lot of time sewing with her mother and many hours in the shed with her father exploring woodwork, which she says was her favourite passion.
However, now as an adult Michaal has thrown herself in the world of needle felting and enjoys its repetitive nature.
“You just basically stab pieces of wool and manipulate it into shape,” she says.
“You keep stabbing the wool until it gets matted together, and it holds the shape. There must be something about it that gels with me because it’s always come really naturally to me.”
Over the recent years, Michaal has made many creations that often centre around the themes of nature and animals.
Her favourite pieces to make are woodland creatures, like foxes, typically the critters are no bigger than 10 centimetres in length.
“I get inspiration looking at nature pictures, I try to capture the essence of what the animal is doing or how they lay or how they walk because that makes them a little bit more real,” Michaal says.
But don’t be fooled by these palmed size cuties, one piece alone typically takes up to eight hours to make.
Michaal admits that she is often seated in front of the TV or in her art studio that is draped in awards, recognising the standard of excellence in her work.
She even has a series of first and second place ribbons awarded from the past two Wentworth Shows.
Her latest award winning pieces were recognised in the 2019 Wentworth Show, for her series of colourful veggies.
Making such indepth creations from design to creation requires much time, however for Michaal she enjoys the serenity needle felting brings her.
“It actually really relaxes me if I am a bit anxious or had a stressful day. The feel of the fibre in my hands and the sound of it is very meditative,” she says.
For Michaal the feeling of isolation and loneliness are never a problem; in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
“It’s almost like the little creatures come alive,” she admits.
“I don’t feel lonely; I’m going to sound like a real weirdo now.
“I guess it’s like they take on a soul, the more that they emerge and I get closer to the end they sort of become animated and alive.
“And right at the end when you do their eyes, it can change their whole look of the animal, each of them are individual and they have their own little personalities.”
Each piece is individually crafted one by one and literally “blood, sweat and tears” go in to Michaal’s work.
When you’re using a sharp barbed needle as your tool of choice sometimes things can go wrong, especially at the beginning.
“I will often stab a finger, usually my index finger or little finger underneath the project wool and it will be sliced by the needle,” she says. “They’re sort of triangular shaped needles so they have little hooks on them so as you push down it also grabs wool on the barbs and fuses together all the fibres so you can make some soft wool into a hard ball shape.”
But thankfully accidents are becoming less common these days.
Less energy goes into worrying about minor finger cuts and more energy put in to sourcing the required materials for needle felting; such as sourcing carded wool.
Despite the perils of barbed needles and the occasional difficulty accessing the right type of materials, Michaal is overflowing with ideas, which include an ambitious large scale project to recreate a stag head to mount on her wall and multiple smaller projects on the go for her online Facebook store, Michaalf.
And finally to answer the big question,yes, Michaal did indeed succeed in recreating a version of the needle felt mushroom she found years ago in Wentworth that sparked her initial love for the art form, needle felting.
