Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Advanced Tutorial: Wet Felting a 3D Bunny Part 2

I should have called the original post "Felting a Critter" because these don't really look like bunnies anymore. I started by wet felting the 3D form and with this posting I am showing how I stuff them and close the seam and how I use needle felting to add detail.

You can find the wet felting stage of these critters on my Advanced Tutorial: Wet Felting a 3D Bunny Part 1.

You will need:
wool for finishing the seam and adding any details that you want
polyester fiber fill
felting needles
optional: skewer

You will need to start by stuffing your critter with the fiber fill. On my smaller bunny, the the ears felted closed and I was unable to stuff them. I don't really like the way that they look. So I made a larger one and the ears turned out just fine.

You will be surprised at how much stuffing can go into one of these little critters! Pack in as much as you can and then take a little bit of wool roving that matches the color of your critter and start to close the seam. You can either pinch the 2 edges together or needle felt a little more to add more felt to make the critter sit flat.

Work your way across the seam. I have found that it is easier to do just a little at a time versus trying to control a huge handful of roving all at once.

Before you completely close the seam up, add more stuffing.

Finally, you can add detail with needle felting. I started by putting pink around the eyes and then realized that it didn't provide much of a contrast.

I also made a larger critter out of wet 3D felting because the small one was a little awkward and I wanted to play with making a bigger shape.

With the larger one I did the exact same process as the small one: stuff and needle felt.

My finished critters. My friend's kid said he thought they looked like Totoro's minion's but I don't think they are quite fat enough! The small lavender dots on the larger critter are needle felted as well.
Now I want to make a giant 3D slug!

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