Needle Felted Cat: How to Sculpt a Convincing One

Cats are the most attempted subject in needle felting and among the hardest to get right, for one reason: everybody knows exactly what a cat looks like. A dog that is slightly wrong reads as a different breed. A cat that is slightly wrong reads as a rabbit, or as nothing at all.

The fix is almost entirely in the skull.

What you need

• Core wool — 25–40 g for a 12 cm cat
• Coat colour in corriedale — 15 g, plus small amounts of white, pink and black
• A little merino or alpaca for the final coat
• 38 and 40 gauge needles, foam pad
• Optional: 6 mm glass eyes, fishing line or stiff nylon for whiskers, pipe cleaners for a standing pose

The proportions that matter

Before any wool, three numbers.

• Head width is about two-thirds of head height. Cat skulls are short and broad. A long head makes a rabbit or a weasel.
• The muzzle is small and low. It occupies the bottom third of the face and barely projects. Most beginners build a snout; cats do not have one.
• Ears sit wide and well back, roughly above the outer corners of the eyes, not on top of the head.
• Body is about three head-lengths; the tail is another two and a half.

Start with a sleeping cat

The curled pose is the beginner's version and also what most people actually want on a shelf. There are no legs to balance and no armature.

1. Body. Roll core wool into a tight ball and needle it into a rounded, slightly flattened kidney shape — the curled back. Firm all over. The method is the same as needle felting a ball.
2. Head. A separate ball, roughly a third the body's width. Firm it hard: a soft head cannot hold features.
3. Join. Leave loose fibre on the underside of the head, press it against the body and needle those fibres in from every direction, then lay a thin veil across the join and felt it down.
4. Tail. Roll a thin sausage, leave one end loose, curl it around the body and attach.
5. Ears. Two flat triangles, made as a pair, attached wide and back.
6. Face. Two shallow depressions for eye sockets, a small pinch of wool for the muzzle, a tiny triangle of pink for the nose.
7. Coat. Thin veils of colour over the whole thing, needled at a shallow angle with a 40 gauge needle.

Sleeping or sitting: which cat should a beginner make first?

Make the sleeping cat first and a sitting cat second, and leave any cat with separate legs until both have worked. Every separate part is another join, and joins are where a first cat goes lumpy, lopsided or wobbly.

Pose	Parts to join	Armature	What it teaches
Sleeping, curled	Body, head, tail, two ears	None	Head shape and clean joins
Sitting, legs shaped into the body	Body, head, tail, two ears	None	Posture and a base that stands level
Standing or walking	Body, head, tail, two ears, four legs	Wire or pipe cleaner	Balance and proportion of limbs

The sleeping cat is forgiving in two specific ways. It lies on its widest side, so it cannot fall over, and the chin is tucked onto the flank, which half hides a muzzle that came out slightly uneven. The sitting cat shows the whole face, so it is the better second project once the head shaping below is comfortable.

How do you make a sitting cat without separate legs?

Build the body as one pear shape and needle the legs into its surface as relief, rather than making them as separate pieces. The legs never carry any weight, so there is nothing to bend, snap or splay. For a cat about 4¾ in (12 cm) tall the wool amounts in the list above still apply.

1. The pear. Roll core wool into a pear about 3 in (7.5 cm) tall, narrow end up. Firm it all over.
2. The base. Stand it on the pad and stab straight down into the bottom until it sits without rocking. Check it on a table, not on the foam.
3. Front legs. Needle two shallow vertical grooves down the front, from the chest to the base, about one leg-width apart. The strip between and beside them reads as two straight front legs.
4. Haunches. Add a flat oval of wool low on each side towards the back and felt it in so it bulges slightly. That bulge is the folded hind leg.
5. Paws. Two small ovals at the bottom of the front legs, and a hind foot peeping forward beside each one.
6. Tail. Wrap it around the base so the tip rests over the front paws. It also covers the edge where the body meets the table.
7. Head. Attach it slightly forward of the top of the pear, so the chest pushes out beneath it. A head set dead centre makes the cat look like a skittle.

The same idea, with the legs shaped into the body rather than added, works for most first animals; needle felted animals for beginners has others built the same way.

Shaping the head properly

This is where the cat is won or lost. Work on the head alone, in your hand, before attaching it.

1. Flatten the face. Needle straight into the front of the ball to create a flat plane. Cats have flat faces; round balls do not.
2. Sink the eye sockets. Two shallow depressions, about two-thirds of the way up, set roughly one eye-width apart. Stab repeatedly into the same small area.
3. Build the cheeks. Add small wisps of wool either side and below, needled in, to give the wide lower face.
4. Add the muzzle. A small horizontal oval of wool below the eyes, only a few millimetres proud, with a shallow vertical line needled down its centre.
5. Nose. A pink triangle, point down, sitting on top of the muzzle.

The full sequence for features, including how to make expressions read, is in needle felting a face.

How do you keep a felted cat's face from looking flat?

Give the flat front of the head a few small raised areas: two muzzle pads, a chin and a slight brow over each eye. The face plane is flat overall, but a face with no relief at all looks printed on, and that is what people mean when they say a felted cat looks flat.

• Muzzle pads first. These are the two rounded whisker pads either side of the centre line below the nose. Roll two tiny balls of wool, each about the size of the eye you plan to use, and felt them in side by side, touching in the middle. They should stand proud by a few millimetres, no more, which keeps them inside the small, low muzzle described above.
• Chin second. A smaller pad tucked under and slightly behind the muzzle pads. Without it the mouth area runs straight into the neck.
• Nose on top. The nose sits where the two pads meet at the top, point down. Keep it close to the eyes: the gap between the inner corners of the eyes and the top of the nose is about one eye's height. A nose set lower lengthens the face, which is the rabbit problem again.
• Mouth line. A short vertical line from the point of the nose down between the pads, then curving outward along the bottom of each pad, like an upside-down Y.
• Brow. A thin wisp above each socket, needled in along its lower edge so it forms a soft ledge over the eye.

Eye spacing is the other half of it. Keep the sockets one eye-width apart, both on the front plane facing forward, with the outer corners slightly higher. Eyes that drift round towards the sides of the head make the face look narrow and pointed, however good the muzzle is.

Then look at the head from the side. You want a small step in at the eyes, the nose and muzzle pads as the most forward point, and the chin tucked back below. If the profile is a straight line from forehead to chin, the face will look flat from the front as well. Colour finishes the job: a paler wisp over the pads and slightly darker wool in the sockets makes the relief read from across a room.

Eyes

Cat eyes are large relative to the head, almond-shaped, and set at a slight angle with the outer corner higher. Three options:

• Felted eyes — a green or amber oval with a black slit pupil, needled in flat. Safe for children, softer in appearance.
• Glass cat eyes on wire — sold specifically with slit pupils, pushed into the socket on a wire loop and secured with glue. Much more lifelike.
• Beads — quick, but the round pupil is wrong for a cat.

Whichever you use, sink them into the sockets rather than sitting them on the surface, and add a thin rim of darker wool around each. See needle felting eyes.

Fur and markings

Do not needle the coat flat. Apply thin veils and stroke them in the direction the fur grows — down the back, forward on the chest, out from the nose on the cheeks — needling at a shallow angle so the surface stays slightly raised.

• Tabby. Lay thin lines of the darker shade across the body, following the curve of the ribs, and needle only lightly so the edges stay soft.
• Tuxedo and bicolour. White chest, chin, paws and belly go on last, over the base colour.
• Siamese. Cream body with darker points on ears, muzzle, feet and tail, blended at the edges rather than sharply divided.
• Black cats. Use grey core, not cream — see core wool for why.

Longhaired cats are better made with wool locks or with reverse-barb needles, both covered in needle felting fur.

Where cat felting goes wrong

• It reads as a rabbit. The head is too long and too narrow. Cat skulls are short and broad.
• It reads as a bear. The ears are too round and set too close together.
• The face looks empty. No eye sockets. Sink them before the eyes go anywhere near it.
• The muzzle projects. Cats barely have one — it sits low and adds a couple of millimetres, no more.
• The coat looks flat. One colour, needled straight in. Use two or three related shades at a shallow angle.

Whiskers

Cut stiff nylon fishing line or bristles into 3–4 cm lengths. Push each one into the muzzle with a needle or a dab of glue on the end. Twelve whiskers in three rows either side, plus two above each eye. They should be long — whiskers reach past the width of the head.

A standing or sitting cat

Once the curled version works, a posed cat needs a wire armature: a spine, four legs and a tail in pipe cleaner or 1 mm wire, wrapped in core wool before any shaping. Cats stand with the front legs vertical and the back legs angled, and the whole body slopes very slightly down towards the shoulders.

Working from a photo of a real cat

For a likeness, the markings matter less than the head shape and the eye colour. Print the photo at the size you intend to make, work with it beside you, and check the silhouette from the side — most failures are a muzzle that is too long or ears that are too high. The full portrait method is in needle felted pet portraits.

If you want to use fur from the cat itself, that is possible and covered in felting with cat hair.

Two related projects sit either side of this one: flat cut-and-sew cats, in felt cat patterns, and something for the cat rather than about it, in felted cat cave. For a complete change of problem, a needle felted fish has no legs, no ears and no fur, and is carried entirely by its profile and its colour.