House of Pugish

 

 

Legs next... here is were your going to have to have plenty of patience and work slowly and carefully as stabbing yourself with those needle are not pleasant!  wrap a bit of wool around the leg felting one side down just enough to keep it down... fold the other end over and begin felting... keep felting the wool down until it becomes a nice skin...

Now if you have made your horses legs a bit thin then felt wool only to the knee level...we'll cover the bottoms of the legs in lesson 4

 

 Next cover the whole body in wool or fiber ... I always start at the tummy and chest ...as you work you'll notice the legs will be pulled in so they aren't so splayed.

When you've covered the body fully you'll have something like this...

 

 Now is time to attach the head... play around and pin in different positions until you find one you like... now thread your black beads onto some very strong thread about 8-10" length ... thread a doll needle with the ends of one set of eyes and push needle through eye position and through to the back of the neck as you'll see below I have... slip needle off and repeat for the second eye coming out again at the back of the neck but as close to the other thread as possible ..tie both threads together pulling tightly and knot a few times... re-thread the needle with both threads and loose ends within the body.

 

Lets get rid of that gap between the head and neck join as well as the indent made by the thread... take a chunk of wool and needle felt it over the gap and indent... if you haven't covered it properly then simple add a bit more :o))

Righty ears ...he certainly needs them ... and I'm sure you guys that haven't much experience in needle felting will find them challenging... but I will endeaver to explain them as simply as I can...

Start with 2 balls of wool roughly the same size... if you printed your horse to A4 size you'll need balls of wool around the size of small plums... if like me your doing your horse to around half the size then your balls of wool will need to be about Cherry size... now to get these sizes you need to take a piece of wool and scrunch it up in the palm of your hand and squeeze it... this is the way you judge the size that piece of wool will felt down to!

Okay so you've gotten your 2 balls of wool ready ..now just flatten it down and sort of shape it with your fingers to a triangle shape...

 Now take the triangle between  your thumb and forefinger with the flat edge between fingers..

Felt that edge from top to bottom then turn over and do the opposite edge... keep doing this until it's 1/3rd the size.... felt across the bottom but not too much ... just to neaten it up a wee bit... when your felting the sides do not felt the top of the triangle we want to keep the point :o)) ... when done you should have something that looks like this here... make another one...

 

To attach to the head pin in place and make sure you have them even and in the right place... when you begin to needle felt start at the front center and then the right and left sides... then felt around the entire bottom until attached firmly and felted to the size you like...

 

Now lastly for this lesson we'll tidy up some of those very annoying fluffy bits sticking out all over the place... there are 2 ways to do this ...1stly you can take a pair of small scissors like manacure ones and clip them off as closely as you can ..or if you have a heat gun simple give an overall blast with the heatgun until those hairs shrink and disapear... if you do use the heatgun I must warn you to keep the heatgun moving at all times and dont hold it too closely as burned wool doesn't look nice ...at least not on this guy :o))

Here's how he looks after his blast with the heatgun...

 

Much tidier eh :o))

Okay thats it for this lesson next one will be the finishing one... we'll be doing the long hair on the legs, mane, tail, horn and optional wings!