Showing posts with label needle felted hare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label needle felted hare. Show all posts

25.11.16

Baby hare and flying swans


In-between other things, I have been working on new designs for next year's workshops and the first is this baby hare. 


I am also holding my first local workshop, in Shrewsbury, at a fabulous venue, the Victorian home of Sarah, who runs Fern Dell bed and breakfast near Shrewsbury Abbey. We were hooked up by BBC radio Shropshire on the Jim Hawkins show, after he interviewed me one morning and I mentioned that I was looking for a suitable workshop place.  Seconds later, Sarah had contacted me on Twitter and within 24 hours we had things pretty much sorted.


 So baby hare will be tried for the first time next year on March 2nd, a Thursday. It's an all day workshop and Sarah will be providing a home cooked lunch and refreshments, all of which is included in the price. However, it has booked up pretty quickly and there are only three places left.  If you'd like to see more details, you can find them on my workshop page - booking is directly through myself.  And if you'd like to see the beautiful Fern Dell, the website is here and more lovely photos here in Sarah's Instagram feed


For this weekend only I am having a mini Black Friday sale on these three large, hanging  winter swans, reduced to £40 each plus postage. Each one took two days to needle felt and hangs on silver wire with suspended glass tear drop beads and a twist of silver gauze ribbon.  They are the top featured items in my Etsy shop, or direct links are underneath each picture.



25.10.11

Headless Hare


Happily, this doesn't happen very often, but occasionally
I get halfway through a piece and realise that it is wrong to my original intention. As with this pre-ordered hare, Willow. Yesterday I realised that her arms were going to be too long for her body; cutting the arms down, as I did, didn't help. She needed more neck length. She was looking too tubby anyway - more like a rabbit than a hare. Only one thing to do...find the big scissors...
(If you are Janet of the Empty Nest, you might want to look away now...)


Cut off her head. It gives me a rare chance to look at cross section of one of my toys and see how densely it's been worked.



So the neck extending begins.





Once the wool is taking shape, I can hold the head on with a spare felting needle so that I can work on her more easily, in my hands.




About two hours after I cut her up, she is looking much better, but the joins are still weak and obviously showing.





So I tightly wrap some braces round the weak areas and needle them firmly -




- then carry on patching and smoothing. I also added more at her back, so that she didn't look too oddly tall.




After about five hours, I have a shape I am happy with and pop some black headed pins in her, so that we can say hello at last. Her proper glass eyes will be added later, but I like to have my toys looking at me while I work on them, so pins will do for now.




Much better - see the improvement? (You can look again now Janet).