Needle Felted Head....Stage 3

Life Size Needle Felted Head......stage 3

Now I am starting to refine the shape of the head. Flattening the sides and adding more wool to the chin....lengthening the face. Locating where the features will go and measuring and comparing to my model which is my husband. I have started with the nose.

I added more width to the nose and reshaped the nostrils. Sculpting with wool is much like clay. You can add and subtract as you go. You can even use scissors and trim off unwanted wool and needle in new wool.

You have to be conscious of the profile as well since this is 3 dimensional.  Here I have checked the depth of the nose. I think it's pretty close to accurate.

Check back soon. I will probably move on to the eyes and brow line next.  And will probably be adding more wool to the forehead area.....still adding more length to the face.

Stage 2....Felting a full size head

Life Size Needle Felted Head......stage 2

Now I have needle felted wool batting all over the poly batting  core shape. I am now working on forming the head and getting it to the shape and size it needs to be before moving on to the features. I will also be working on smoothing the surface. I may wet it with soap and water and use wet felting techniques to tighten and smooth the surface.

I included the face below for scale.  The top form is still slightly under full size.

......moving on to stage 3.

Life Size Head Demo....Stage 1

Life Size Needle Felted Head

Well here goes. The beginning stages of my first life size needle felted sculpted head. I decided to use poly batting for my base or core of the head. No use to waste good wool on the inside. I bundled up the poly batting in a ball and put netting around it and secured it with string. Then to form the back of the head I bundled up a smaller ball of batting placed on the first big ball and covered it with netting and hand stitched it together.

After bundling the first large ball I trimmed the netting off close to the tie.

As seen above I placed the smaller bundle of batting over the tie area of the big ball then covered it with netting and hand stitched it down around the edge roughly shaping it while I stitched.

Next I started needle felting wool around the stitched area to fill in and form a better head shape. Now I can continue with the needle felting process. Adding more wool and sculpting. Stay tune for more steps in the process.

Needle felted sculptures

Needle Felted Heads

This is my second character head using better skin tone wool and still using exaggerated features. I am progressing with my features being more prominent and defined and adding more detail.

This is my third head sculpture. Here I am moving toward a more realistic face. This is about 4.5x3.5 and the one above is about 3.5x2.5. My goal is to be able to do a life size head once I get comfortable sculpting with a needle.  These faces are just made up from my mind. I hope to be able to sculpt a person I know eventually.

This is still a work in progress. he only has one ear and still needs some refining and detail.

Sculpting with Wool

Needle Felted Character

This is my first needle felted character. She is about 15" tall. She was a work in progress. I started with the head with no idea in mind. Did not even know if it was going to be male or female. I just let it evolve.

These photos show the evolution.

 

Wet felted Cuff

Cuff with Locks and Beads

This cuff was wet felted with natural Finn Wool and locks. It is embellished with black beads.

The closure is a decorative button on the backside.

Wet felted Vessel

Art Nouveau Vessel

The weather has cooled off a bit so I thought I would do an all day project. I already had this idea in my sketch book. I used Zinn Wool which works very well for vessels. On the top layer I added wisps of merino to make a variation of color. I allowed extra length in my resist pattern and three bump outs on the sides to accommodate the three folds. My resist included 3 multiple pieces taped together at the bottom to form the black extensions. They are not handles, just decorative design elements.

The vessel turned out pretty close to my sketch except for the black extensions. They were supposed to be free at the top but in order for them to be free I would or should have put wire in between the layers of wool so they had some strength and support. Instead I hand stitched the top edge of them to the vessel. I crimped them to give them an interesting shape and let them dry.

Detail of folds.