Needle Felted Penguin: The White Front Is a Separate Panel

Before anything else, put the black wool and the white wool at opposite ends of the table, and handle all the black first so your hands are clean by the time you reach the white. Black fibre travels, and on this animal there is nowhere for it to hide.

A penguin is two colours and one line, and the line is the project. It has to be a boundary rather than a fade: the white front goes on as a separate panel, laid over a finished black body at the very end, with its edge cut in deliberately using the tip of the needle. Every instruction below follows from that.

What you need

• Core wool — 20–25 g
• Black corriedale — about 8 g for the outer coat
• White corriedale — about 5 g, kept away from the black
• Small amounts of pale grey, and orange-yellow for the beak and feet
• 38 gauge for shaping, 40 gauge for the surface and the colour boundary
• Optional: 4 mm black glass eyes, and a scrap of prefelt if you want to cut the front panel instead of laying it

Building the body

1. Roll the core. Build the core as an upright egg about 9 cm tall, wider at the belly than the shoulders. Penguins are pear-shaped from the front and almost straight down the back.
2. Flatten the base. Stand it on the mat and needle the underside flat, then tilt it very slightly forward. A penguin that leans back looks like it is falling over.
3. Compact the core. Work it until it barely gives under a thumb. A soft core distorts under the white panel later and pulls the edge out of shape.
4. Shape the head. Do not make a separate ball. Pinch a waist about two-thirds up with the 38 gauge needle and round the top into a small head that sits directly on the shoulders. Penguins have no visible neck.
5. Add the tail wedge. A short flat triangle at the base of the back, angled down and out. It is small, but it is what stops the body rocking.
6. Cover in black. Two or three thin veils of black over the entire body, head and tail, needled down with the 40 gauge until the core does not show anywhere. Finish the black completely before you touch the white.
7. Make the flippers. Two flat, narrow paddles about 4 cm long, made on the mat, wider at the shoulder and rounded at the tip. Leave loose fibre at one end for attaching.
8. Attach them flat. Needle each flipper to the side of the body along its whole upper length so it lies against the flank, with only the bottom third free.
9. Beak and feet. A small orange-yellow cone, needled on low and pointing slightly down, and two flat webbed feet projecting forward from the base.

Laying the white front

The front panel runs from just under the beak down to the base, narrow at the throat, widening across the belly. Its shape matters less than its edge.

Lay it thin, in veils

Pull a wide, thin, translucent veil of white off the top rather than a rope. A thick clump forces you to stab hard, and hard stabbing is what drives black fibre up through the white. Place the veil, hold it flat with a fingertip, and tack it down the centre first. Then add a second and a third veil until the black stops showing through. Three thin layers cover better than one heavy one and stay whiter, because the black underneath is never disturbed.

Needle from the white side inwards

This is the whole trick. Angle the needle so it enters the white a few millimetres inside the edge and travels towards the centre of the panel. Every stroke drags loose white fibre under itself, away from the black. Needle from the black side inwards and you do the opposite — you push black up into the white and white out over the black, and both go grey. Work all the way round the outline this way before you firm the middle.

Cut the line in with the needle tip

Once the panel is attached, define the boundary with just the tip of a 40 gauge needle, going in almost vertically along the line, close together, only 2–3 mm deep. This creases the surface and tucks the last stray fibres under. Work the line once, then look at it in daylight before tidying anything. If grey has crept in, pick that fibre off, lay a fresh scrap of white a little inside the old edge and redo the line — you cannot needle grey back to white. Related boundary work is in needle felting techniques, and the reason blending is wrong here reads well against how to blend wool colours.

Posture and flippers

A penguin reads as a penguin because it is vertical. Keep the back a straight line from the head to the tail with no curve, and put the belly forward of it. The centre of gravity should sit over the feet and the tail wedge together; if it wobbles, add a little more core wool low in the belly rather than making the feet bigger.

Flippers held out from the body are the second most common error after the grey edge. Real penguins keep them pressed to their sides. Attach them flat, and for a little movement free only the last centimetre and angle it back. Eyes go small, dark and close to the beak — see needle felting eyes, since penguin eyes sit almost in the black and are easy to lose.

Common problems

• A grey halo round the white. The two colours were needled together at the boundary. Strip the grey fibre, re-lay white inside the old line, and needle from the white side only.
• The white looks thin and dirty. The black is showing through, not staining. Add another veil rather than working the existing one harder.
• It will not stand. The base is not flat, or the body leans back. Re-needle the underside on the mat and add a tail wedge.
• It looks like a bird, not a penguin. The flippers are sticking out and the neck is too long. Needle the flippers down and lose the neck entirely.
• The white edge is wobbly. You freehanded it. Mark the outline lightly with a few needle pricks first, then commit to that line.

Variations

• Emperor. Tall and heavy-bodied, with a soft orange-yellow patch at each side of the neck fading into the white. That patch is the one place on a penguin where you should blend.
• Gentoo. Smaller, with a bright orange beak and a clean white stripe over the top of the head, joining eye to eye. The stripe uses exactly the same edge technique on a smaller scale.
• Chick in grey down. All soft mid-grey with a black face mask and a white patch round the eyes. Needle it loosely and raise the surface for a downy finish, as with needle felting fur.
• Christmas ornament. Build at 5 cm and add a hanging loop into the head before the black goes on. Penguins are the easiest of the felted Christmas ornaments to make in a batch, because there is no fur to raise.
• Walking pose. One foot forward, body tilted, and a wire armature through the legs. Harder to balance and worth doing only once you can stand a plain one reliably.

If the two-colour edge is the part you want to practise more, an owl gives you the same problem across a facial disc, and a sheep reverses it with a black face against a pale fleece. The general list of things that go wrong early is in needle felting mistakes.