Needle felting for St. Patricks Day

Today instead of cards, I made this candle mat using the Cricut to cut all the shapes out of card stock to use as patterns. I used wool felt for the shamrocks in 3 colors and they cannot be cut out successfully with the Cricut.

On page 30 of the Designer"s Calendar booklet, the larger 4 leaf clover is cut at 3" shadow and then cut the clover so it would layer over the shadow. Alternating clovers were cut at 2 1/2" in shadow and clover. I did not use any fusible web but just layered them and started stitching.

The machine I use is special because it does not use any thread but has 5 special barbed needles to mesh the fibers together so no other stitching is needed to keep the fabrics together. To hold the backing on, I used fusible web and then used a stitch from my regular sewing machine to go around the edge and trimmed the green felt 1/8" from the stitching.
I did have trouble using the regular white felt because it was slightly thinner and did distort the original shape but I had run out of the white wool felt large enough for the project which is about 12". A closeup of the shamrocks that is very quick to make.