Stab Stab Stab!

Felting is a very addictive thing! It is also very therapeutic!!!  Stabbing away at the wool, you can take out any repressed aggressions or you can just let your mind go and be free!

I get lots of ideas on Pinterest and saw a wonderful felted pendant that I decided I wanted to emulate.  I am still debating whether I need to add something to the heart itself.

And as I thought about what I wanted to create next, I had the desire to try my hand at flat needle felting (as opposed to the 3D stuff I have been doing)

I was sort of cleaning and found a couple old pairs of jeans that I had saved for a future project. Well the future finally arrived and I decided I needed a purse with something felted on the front.

It is has been a long time since I have used my beloved Tucker as a subject but I felt (no pun intended) that it was time.

I first drew an outlined of his little face.

I then traced that onto some muslin. I had some friends tell me that they use water soluble interfacing or some such thing but I didn't have any and didn't want to go buy any....I wanted to do this project with only things I had on hand. Thus the muslin.

I pinned the muslin to the denim and began blocking in colors. I forgot to take a picture of my muslin piece so here it is with his eyes almost done and the white totally complete (notice his chubby cheeks).

 

 

As I neared the edge with my felting, I removed the pin and cut away the muslin, I then felted past the muslin to hold it down and hide it completely. See the inner ear is done below but the edges are still plain muslin.

 

 

Tucker, although he looked like just white with striped areas, actually had quite a few colors in his dark spots! I blocked in the basic tan that seemed to be the underlying color of his coat.

 

 

I then pulled out 4 more browns from my wool stash to create the stripes on his head.  BTW I had to blend colors to create his eyes and inner ears as what I had was just too bright and needed to be toned down.

Here is a photo of Tucker's face. I still miss this little guy every day!

And here he is felted onto the denim.

Not quite perfect, I see too many flaws, but I am still happy with this first attempt.  :-)

I plan on sewing the purse together tomorrow so hopefully I can get some pictures posted very soon.