New needle felting lessons on Wool Gatherings blog and some of my own mistakes

This is how I am feeling today.....angry and fed up with endless days of rain . It's 2pm but looks like night outside . Although I love the sound of rain and am not a fan of bright sun, this weather is getting in the way of my plans of taking pictures of my animals to list on Etsy . It's been a full week of cloudy skies and no rumor of sun until Tuesday....

On the bright side...the world did not end yesterday, as internet rumors were suggesting , although the skies over New Hope looked like it was thinking about it .

The real purpose of this post however, is to show some of my first attempts to needle felt somewhat "realistic" animals that I plan on redoing . Each has some fiber colors I don't like, bad faces or misaligned body parts . If you have ever seen my first needle felting, you can see that I tended to make really wild looking fantasy creatures . At the time, I just wanted to play with all the different colors and textures of the fibers and thought there were already enough "realistic animal" felters and I wanted to try something different . 

Although they might share some basic features with real animals....they were just twisted enough to be interesting to my eyes .

 The above dog???? was one of my first attempts to actually make something based on a real animal and I did not like the result . It took over 20 hours and looked "pop-eyed" and front legs never stood well...(no wires) . The front legs were to short after felting and this is when I first realized that allowing for shrinkage while felting was a pretty big deal and it takes a lot of practice .

 Although I liked this pup better, I was still having problems figuring out how firm to felt my animals . I made the core very solid but then added very loosely tacked on roving on top . I wanted to simulate both the look and feel of real fur but what I found was....loose merino tends to mat up over time and with handling . Also, some of the wool that looked brown in my dark apt. looked pink in sunlight . ...another "do-over" .

As to the last "dog".....eck! I'm not sure when I made him but it was back when I was still "poorly" needle felting eyes and a poor choice of fiber left his snout totally distorted . Another "do-over" .
But here is the really good part . I put all these animals in the closet and waited until I felt ready to try again . Perhaps they will never be my best work but, the past 2 years I have much more experience in what fibers and needles to use and how to pre-shape body parts before I add them to the body . I believe that I can at least make them better so......Don't ever through out your first projects, stash them until you are ready to see them with more experience and fresh eyes .


I just found another blogger who shares this basic philosophy and who is willing to share some of her own lessons learned . SO, if your interested in learning....(I know I am not very good at explaining what I do when I am needle felting as It is more tactile then cerebral)..... please check out her blog ....I will also have her listed in my "lessons" section top right of blog .


woolgatherings

Perhaps she can give me some tips to make this dog a bit less.....hidious and how to make my animals not look like they are going to commit homicide or suicide < Wish me luck and happy felting .