Felting with Phoenix - Part 4

It’s that time again: "Felting with Phoenix – Part 4" is here! I’m proud to present my newest project, the American Tabby. I chose this for two main reasons. The first being that it is a more complicated project that is a good way to test the skills I’ve learned throughout this project, and the second being that my own cat is a tabby. The American Tabby is a classic cat breed, demonstrated, “with its big, erect ears, rounded face and sharp gaze,” (Nishida and Tomoko, 14). After closely studying the shape of the cat’s figure, I got to work. Only after starting the project did I realize just how many parts there were to make: The body, the front legs, the back thighs, the back feet, the tail, the head, the ears, the muzzle, and the nose are all separate parts that have to be made on their own, not to mention adding the coloring, markings, claw details and plastic eyes. Trying to follow the steps in an orderly fashion so as not to get overwhelmed, I created a simple cylindrical base. This gave me an idea of where to start and how large the other parts would need to be. As instructed, I started creating all of the separate parts, “smoothing with [my] fingertips as [I went], punching with the needle to create shape” (Nishida and Tomoko, 29). After all of the leg parts were attached and I created the head, this is what I had to work with:

With that, my cat was starting to become visible through the wool blobs: It’s a glorious moment when you can start to tell that the arbitrary shapes are actually making something worthwhile. I created the tail, using Nishida and Tomoko’s technique of wrapping wool around a wire to give it bendability. Once I made the shape for the ears, I had all the pieces I needed, and it was time to start the surprisingly time-consuming process of wrapping the gray coloring around the oddly-shaped figures.

For the head detailing, I put black plastic eyes in the cat’s head and felted green rings around them to give them a color pop. I put gray wool over the tops of the eyes to give them a realistic lidded look. I put on a ball of white wool with a pink nose and a thin black threaded mouth. On the body I followed a similar process, wrapping gray around the back and curling the darker gray markings around the legs and back. To make it look more like my cat, I wanted to give the tabby a fluffy spot on its chest. To accomplish this, I used a technique from the book “Adorable Felted Animals” of implanting small layers of white wool on the cat’s chest, working up from the bottom and trimming as I go (Nishida and Tomoko, 32). Finally, the body, tail, and head were completed, color and all. I wrapped some loose wool around the bottom of the head to act as glue for the connection then felted it on, repeating the process for the tail. At last, my creation was finished:

Overall, I’m proud of the results of this newest project. I feel like the felting methods I’ve learned from “Adorable Felted Animals” have really helped me improve my art projects. Do you guys agree? What’s your favorite animal, do you think it would be hard to recreate in felt?

Citation: Nishida, Kyoko, and Tomoko Kodera. Adorable Felted Animals: 30 Easy & Incredibly Lifelike Needle Felted Pals. Tokyo: Tuttle, 2015. Print.