Needle felter Lori Welch shapes lifelike creatures from fiber

Puffs and strips of soft, pure wool slowly take shape in the hands of needle felter Lori Welch, who twists and stabs them into realistic, sometimes bendable, animal sculptures that draw the eye and tug at the heart. 

“They start as nothing and then they come to life, and now he kind of talks to me,” Welch said recently as she worked on shaping a farm animal in her Hoover’s Valley home studio. “I started this one, and he was going to be a goat. In my hands, he became a baby calf and I just love him.” 

The art of needle felting grew out of the fiber industry in the mid-1800s. More than 150 years later, several California quilters and wet felters began playing around with batting materials, producing trolls and fairies. The art became popular in Scandinavia and Japan. 

“This isn’t as common as so many crafts are,” Welch said. 

She began her apprenticeship about eight years ago watching YouTube videos, which is where she found Sara Jo Renzulli of Sarafina Fiber Art in Maryland. She attended workshops in Renzulli’s studio on a regular basis before the pandemic, mostly building exotic animals from the African savanna as class projects. 

While Welch has an impressive selection of lions and tigers and bears (one with a fish in its mouth), the heart of her art are creatures of home and farm. 

Lori and Todd Welch retired to the Texas Hill Country from Colorado, where she worked for 30 years for a dentist and he for a pharmaceutical company. They moved to Hoover’s Valley two years ago after a short stint in Johnson City. Her studio, dubbed The Snug, is also the family TV room, where she can knit or needle felt while watching TV, surrounded by her art.  

Working from photographs, she crafts miniature replicas of farm animals, native wildlife, and pets. She has two of a neighbor’s dog who regularly visits the back door for treats and one of a family dog who has since died. Gus had a custom leg brace in his later years, which is included in his wool replica, silver clasps, velcro straps, and all. 

The delicate, intricate details in each piece make it easy to form a bond with these lifelike miniatures. The connection to spirit is all in the eyes, Welch said. Some are glass or black beads, but most are carefully crafted from wool.

“You do them in a little color wool and add a little bit of light — the light of life,” she explained. “It’s painting with wool. You’re putting all these shades and nuisances in. Everyone has a water line in their eye. No one eye is just one color. It’s a painterly process.” 

She also likens the process to sculpting with clay, something she dabbled in before taking up felting needles. 

“You are doing with needles and wool what fingers are doing with clay,” she said. 

As with clay sculptures, needle felters sometimes build around wire armatures. Welch uses them sparingly. Too much armature breaks needles, she said. She begins her animals by tightly wrapping wool into a basic shape. From there, she adds the musculature of shoulders, legs, torsos, and cheeks. 

“See a shape, make a shape,” she said.

Shapes are added by stabbing small, carefully layered or wrapped puffs of fiber into the animal’s frame with a felting needle. The needles have a barbed end pointing in one direction. The wool goes in but does not pull back out, tangling the wool fibers and causing them to felt. Colors and details are added with more stabbing. 

“You stab it to life,” Welch said. “Every stab has a directionality. I can create the shape I want by stabbing. This is the art of sculpting with wool. You shape with a needle.” 

That shape can be the upturn of a donkey’s lip as it snatches a carrot or the raised eyebrow and tweaked ear of a rabbit as if it has heard a sound in the woods. Her current project is a pile of five piglets, each one distinct in color, features, and pose. Each can be removed from the pile and replaced at whim. 

She is working from a painting of a pile of pigs, but to get the noses, eyes, and ears just right, she studies detailed photos of the real thing downloaded to her smartphone. From there, it is all about the wool — pulling it, smoothing it, stabbing it. 

“Part of the art of felting is that you really need to understand fibers,” Welch said. “Is this a long staple fiber? Is it a short staple fiber? You really need the right fibers. Not all fibers are equal when it comes to needling them.” 

Fiber color is also important, getting back to the painterly process. Welch keeps multiple carders close at hand to mix her colors, even after starting with wools purchased specifically to pelt. Renzulli sells wool in colors of beaver, pig, squirrel, red fox, and grizzly, and many more animals. Welch also buys from friend Laurie Simpson of Wandering Gypsy in San Antonio, who has her own fiber mill. 

Even with a pre-mix, Welch will blend colors to get the right look and feel for specific spots in specific places on the specific animal she is creating.

One of her favorite multi-colored creations is Picasso, America’s most famous wild horse. He is known for his distinctive markings and two-toned mane, which she specifically recreated. The aging Mustang was last seen in Colorado in 2019, but Welch will always have his soft, felt, 3-D figure with her, she said. 

As she moved around The Snug, introducing her works of art, she cradled them in her arms and fondly spun a tale for each. Even those created from random pictures have a story of how, where, and when they were made. 

The love and attachment to each piece might well be why her animals entice visitors to Makers Market in Marble Falls to pet and then buy them. 

“They are so soft and lovable,” Welch said. 

This reporter would call them beguiling. 

Welch’s Farmyard Fiber animals can be found at Makers Market, 513 Main St. in Marble Falls. She recently added her work to the Highland Arts Guild and Gallery, 318 Main St. in Marble Falls. Look for the tiny dangling gold tags with her signature on each. 

suzanne@thepicayune.com