Needle Felted Puppy

I wanted to see if I could replicate Buster the Puppy in wool and had a go at a needle felted version of him. This is pretty much the look we are greeted with whether we have been out of his sight for a few minutes for a few hours. He is always pleased to see us - because we might throw his ball for him. Or give him some sausage.

He started from a very basic sketch. I knew the shape I wanted him to be and that I wanted his nose pointing upwards. His legs would just be hinted at ('cos I can't do dog legs) and I'd worry about his ears once the body was done.

With a rough idea of what I wanted, I got started.

I used a length of wool roving and folded it in half to build bulk in the base. Once I had a form that would stand I pinched some shape to create the forehead and left about an inch of wool to form the snout.

Having firmed the shape up with a bit of needle stabbing, I pushed some black headed pins in where I thought the eyes would go so I had a sense of his character. These helped a lot while leaving me flexibility about final eye position. The legs were created by pushing a deep ridge in the centre of the body and on the. outside edge.

It took several attempts to get the ears small enough, I had over estimated the amount of wool needed. I also needed to decide if I was going to allow the colour on the muzzle and body to be contained within a sharp edge or leave it fuzzy. In this experiment I opted for fuzzy.

Fuzzy mutt.

His colour is a real mix of cream, light brown, grey and black. If I were doing this again I'd stick to block colours for ease. Trying to get all the colours in complicates what is a small shape.

The finished version stands about 4 inches high.

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