Meet Petra! - 1/6th scale needlefelted dog! (plus tutorial)

Kirsty has always wanted a dog, and over lockdown finally decided to take the plunge and adopt from a rescue. As soon as she laid eyes on Petra the whippet, she knew she’d found her new best friend!

                         

She's got excellent recall so letting her off the lead to go for a run is totally safe!

I've only dabbled in needlefelting, making a couple of cats that were going to belong to Max and Juno, but they weren't as good as I wanted them to be, so I never introduced them and will likely remake them in due course now that I've had a little more practice. 

For those unfamiliar with the process, it involves core wool and wool roving, a wire armature and some rather sharp barbed needles which you stab the wool repeatedly with until it felts down into a more solid form. It's rather time consuming, but very rewarding, and is an excellent way to keep your hands busy when binge watching a series or something. (in my case, ER, which I haven't watched since the early 2000s, and strangely, it hasn't dated as much as I expected!) 

I learned how to felt from my friend Tom, who makes absolutely incredible needle felted horses which I'd thoroughly recommend! -Needle Neddies- (I've got one on order right now actually...👀)

I went down to visit him in the Before Times, just before the first lockdown and much fun was had listening to true crime podcasts whilst stabbing! 😂

I'm not sure what possessed me to give this one a go, but I've always been a fan of long dogs, and I thought Baxter could do with a friend out on walks. I might make more eventually if inspiration strikes.

The first step was the armature. I couldn't tell you what gauge of wire this was, as it was in my big box of assorted wire, though I suspect it was originally sold for floristry use. Once the basic skeleton was done, I wrapped some wool around it tightly to act as the core.

With that in place the stabbing could begin! Once the first layer was solid enough I added more wool and started to build up the basic musculature. The wires made it a little tricky at times, and I did break a couple of needles during the process unfortunately.

For some areas I felted lumps of wool into 'sheets' of muscle on a piece of sponge so I could apply them onto the sculpture a little easier. This was a really handy way of keeping things consistently sized so nothing ended up disproportionate.

With the basic form done, now it was time for the final coat. After researching whippet colours, I decided on a nice dark brindle with a few white markings. Rather than simply laying the roving on top and felting it, I chopped up a mixture of gingery brown and black roving and applied it almost like flock, then felted it into place. This let me build up a nice colour without having any obvious lines where the roving overlapped. The white markings were done the same way, though I added a little peachy pink at the muzzle.

I wanted to felt the paws like everything else but I was really struggling to keep them attached so eventually I just blobbed some epoxy glue over the ends of the wire into a vaguely pawlike shape, and glued some of the flock on top. It wasn't exactly how I wanted them to look but it isn't too bad. In hindsight, I should have sculpted the feet onto the wire before I started felting, so I'll need to remember that for next time.

The nose was sculpted out of Apoxie Sculpt onto the end of a pin, and the eyes were just black headed sewing pins with some gloss varnish applied. I applied some glue to the end of the pin, then pushed them into place so they should stay put pretty well. The mouth was sewn in as I didn't fancy trying to felt in details that fine. I made sure to do that before adding the nose, so I could hide the knotted thread right at the end of her snoot. Her ears were made a little differently, using some black felt with the mixed brindle colour felted on top, cut into shape and then stabbed into position.

I made her collar from some leather scraps, Rio Rondo hardware and silver paint.

I'm definitely going to give the cats another go because as much as Max and Juno love Baxter, they're cat people through and through and their house absolutely needs a couple of moggies!

If you've never tried needlefelting I'd highly recommend it! It's really easy to do, and while you do have to watch your fingers, the basic technique is really simple and pretty much boils down to: take wool, stab, repeat.