Tuesday, October 23, 2007

How I sometimes felt


This is the head of a mermaid I am needle sculpting. I started this sculpture by measuring my 9 year old daughter. I measured her head diameter, her arms, and the distance from her shoulders to her waist etc.
To make the head I stuffed a pair of woollen tights ( with the legs cut off) with scraps of jumpers and pieces of left over felt. Whilst I was doing this I had a piece of dowel pushed into the head through the bottom to make a space to attach the head to the body.
I then covered the rounded creation with corriedale rolags ( best for needlefelting) and began needlefelting. The lips are a bit much and the eyebrows are extreme. I am not too unhappy with the rest. The hair is temporary until I find something more suitable. As you can see she is still a work in progress. For her body I constructed a wire frame and wrapped that with left over quilt wadding. I always use 100% cotton so that was not an issue.
Wool likes to be felted into natural fibres.
Then, as with the head I wrapped the whole thing with corriedale
wool. The boobs are made from the feet of the same woollen stockings
I used for the head and then stuffed with wool. One is larger than the
other. I will have to fix that, but I suppose it's normal, but a little bit
obvious. She will not have hands as such, I think that will be just a bit too hard. I will put something in her hands so you can't see them. She may be made into a bridal mermaid yet, I am not sure. I am planning on getting a little more extreme, beading, embroidery, etc. Especially the tail.
If anyone has a great idea for a name it would be much appreciated.

4 comments:

  1. Ms. Kissable?
    Botoxia?....*L*
    Licky Lou?

    Something about those lips, to make it seem like you intended them to be exaggerated.

    ReplyDelete
  2. She looks terrific so far!! I ususally wait till my dollsa re almost done and then a neame just seems to bubble up to the surface. Once you have done he embellishing and changed out her hair etc, i think she will definately develope apersonality and her name will be very apparent!!
    Keep adding pictures so we can watch her progress!!
    Elizabeth

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love it - you've probably thought of this but I went to a dollmaking workshop and we made the hands oput of fine wire first then covered them which made it really easy!

    Love the blog. Keep getting tempted by embellishers - have managed to resist so far but not sure how long I can keep it up!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Don't have a name for your mermaid but I think she will be gorgeous when she's finished. You blog is really interesting, I'm just going back to read some more of the older posts.

    ReplyDelete