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Needle Felting Dogs. Making the Head.
Last time, we made the body. Its time for the head.
You will need-
Core wool
Plastic or glass eyes with a metal or plastic pin behind
Awl (tool to make holes)
Glue
Needle felting needles
Mat
Tray or hard surface under your mat
Take some core wool and start making a blunt cone shape, this is going to be the muzzle.
You will need extra fluff left behind the muzzle to make the head.
Work the wool to make the muzzle shape, then round the head behind the muzzle.
To add the eyes, you will need to make holes with the awl.
Look at a photo of a dog to get the distance between the eyes. Too far apart and your dog will look cartoony, two close, poor thing will have a squint.
You can make more than one hole if you need to reposition as you can add a bit of core wool and stab it into the obsolete hole.
Once you are happy with the position of your eyes, take the eys out one out at a time and dob a little bit of glue on the metal pin at the back of the eye and put it back in the hole.
Repeat for the other eye. It doesn't matter if they are not exactly in postion yet.
Keep working core wool around the eyes, mostly over the top to make the brow.
Keep building up around the eyes until you are happy they are fixed in position and in the place you want them.
A certain percent of the dogs eye is in its head inside the orbital space.
Building up around the eye may take a while as you are making the brow, the eyelids and cheekbones at the same time.
You will be adding coloured wool as the dogs fur later so don't go too far at this stage with working around the eyes, just enough to give shape and keep the eyes in the position you want them.
Next, take the body. This had some fluff left at the neck end. Splay it out as this is where we are going to attach the head.
Put the head near the body and pull the fluff, gently, up to the head. This is how the head will be secured.
Work the wool around the neck, moving the needle in a sideways motion so the head felts together with the body. It needs to be secure or the head will drop off or droop.
You should finish with something that looks like this.
Next time, we will start putting the colours on and fill the dog out so it takes shape the dog breed we want it to look like.