Air frame needle-felting experimentation fail

I’ve just tried something that didn’t work and I’d love your thoughts please.

For my needle-felted paintings I have always used a piece of high density 50mm foam to needle-felt into (to create a cushion for the felting and to protect the table or easel). The problem is that foam is synthetic and contains chemicals, and so I’ve been looking for a way to remove chemicals from my art practice as much as possible.

I designed an alternative to foam, but my experiment has failed (see the video). Here’s what I did, and if you can see a flaw in my plan (or know of a non-toxic alternative) please tell me!

• I bought a standard plastic pipe tapestry/needlepoint frame to hold my base fabric.

• I built a wooden holder for the pipe frame, so that the frame would sit 50mm off the table or easel. You can see that the holder packed out well and that the retaining strips on top hold the frame nicely in place.

• The issue was two-fold: (1) Needle-felting into air feels very “odd” and feels like there is less control to create fine lines or details; and (2) the material started to slacken by the end of this 30 min session (you can see the bounce in the fabric at the end of the video). I could’ve easily pulled the fabric at the back to tighten it, but I imagine that would get frustrating pretty quickly after a few times.

I know that some felters use a woollen base - could this work for large, completely flat artwork (up to 1m wide)? How is the mat created?

I've also heard of people using 50mm insulation foam, but that is synthetic foam.

Are there any other alternatives out there??!!!

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