Week in Review and dragon wings phase 2

So, these wings are my second attempt at the dragon wings and I am much happier with the result . Firstly, I am in love with the fabric which I did not make myself but take full credit for having good taste to buy . I've been saving it for something special and I think this qualifies . Sorry for the poor pictures...another cloudy day in MN but if you click on the picture you can get a better idea of the detail .

The silk chiffon fabric that I use on phase one wings sagged under the weight of the glitter modge podge but I use a different method to make these cotton wings which I will show in my next blog post . The reverse side, murky as the shot is, shows how I eventually solved the problem of having removable wings . I will also show how I did this next post as it was one of my biggest challenges . These can easily be removed for shipping and even easier replaced by the buyer .

Another goal for this week was over coming my fear..(though not my annoyance), with using wires in my felting . One reason I needed to do this was to add claws to my animals .  I thought these proto-type "paws with claws" would make interesting necklaces with a stone glued to their centers . But mostly, I just wanted to practice wiring the toes with enough wire hanging out that I could add Femo claws to my smaller animals . I didn't happen to have any Femo....(in the mail) so I used several layers of white enamel with mixed results .
There is even a human mummy hand in the mix : )
I wrapped several layers of silicon tape....(traditionally used to wrap pipe threads to prevent leaking when joining to pipes together . )  ...around the wire hand and then painted it in flesh tones, then wrapped some more around the hand to imitate mummy bandages . The largest paw does not have wires but is another cat toy with needle felted silk as claws . Silk needle felted better then I would have though, had I not tried it .

Moving on from the toes, I wired toes and legs on the above guy so I could make bent legs . The claws are wire wrapped and needle felted in silk but I hope to do the next nails with the femo . The base of most of the animal is wool which I covered with some yummy alpaca in reddish brown and the white "fur" is my current favorite...corn silk . It's just so soft and shinny and doesn't matt up like the merino .

One last project was just a make-over from a few year ago....

The center swirl is merino but the top and bottoms are pure silk needle felted into the wool base fabric . Can't really see the shine in this low lighting but it's supper soft and shinny . Not sure what I will do with it but it was interesting to felt with the silk fibers and I'm happy with the results . So that's was my week and I feel like I learned a lot and am pretty happy with my experiments . Wing tutorial to follow and hopefully one about felting with wires if I get any better at it .

Happy felting