Photo by Isabell Macrina
Toth is always ready to help when patrons get stuck
By Isabell Macrina
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Arts and crafts is a great way to occupy the mind and hands, and you can get something to decorate your home afterwards, but starting the process on your own can be daunting. Dover Town Library (DTL) brought in Rachelle Toth on Thursday evening to teach a group of patrons how to do one of these interesting crafts; needle felting.
Needle felting is the process that uses a specialized barbed needle to tangle loose wool into a shape, making whatever suits your imagination. This focus was how to turn a teacup into your very own cactus garden, and its completely customizable.
Toth gave everyone a barbed felting needle, roughly as long as a hand, a piece of foam to use as a base instead of the table, and a ball of loose wool called a roving. The wool was all different shades of green, but she had even more colors on the table for later. And the lesson began.
She started by showing the group her example, and how to start by forming the shape (roughly) of what you want your cactus to end up like. From there, you purposefully tangle the wool together by poking it with the needle. It is a good way to work out aggression but be careful to take the wool off and re-shape it, or you will connect it to the foam. From there, Toth encouraged everyone to try new things with it. They could make stripes on the cacti or take spiderweb-like pieces of wool to create color variation in the piece. They could even add to the cacti, whether making arms like the saguaro cactus, or using additional colors to make flower adornments like the parodia. Everything was completely customizable and Toth encouraged people to use whatever colors they were feeling and just make shapes.
Toth has been needle felting since about 2019, when her sister ordered kits for the two of them and their mother. She has been crafting and teaching groups of people how to ever since. The group that night was a collection of friends who came together for an activity, a mother-daughter duo, and even a pair on a date. It is truly a hobby anyone could pick up.
After forming their cactus, or cacti if they felt comfortable making more, it was time to make a garden. They took their teacup and saucer glued together, the teacup filled with plaster of Paris, and hot glued the bottom of their cacti to the surface of the plaster. Once all their cacti were down, they covered the exposed plaster with glue and decorative sand, and it was done.
Toth was incredibly encouraging, always going around to help anyone, giving compliments, and photographing all their finished works. She was a great teacher, and people leaving were laughing about the fun they had and the potential new hobby. Consider checking out needle felting or see if Toth is teaching a workshop nearby.
