How to Make Felted Dog Sculptures

Use loose wool like this to mold your creations when you make felted dog sculptures.

Needle felting is a sculptural technique where the felting artist uses sharply barbed needles to mold wool into a shape. This type of fiber art can be useful in making embellishments for clothing, wall art and decor, or three-dimensional shapes. If you love dogs, you can make felted dog sculptures using a small amount of feltable wool and a few needle-felting needles. This craft uses sharp tools, so it is not a safe crafting skill to practice with children.

Things You'll Need

• Wire twist ties
• Feltable wool
• Needle-felting needles
• Needle-felting mat or foam block

Instructions

1. Bend wire twist ties, left over from closing food packages, to sculpt the basic shape of a dog's body. Make an oval for the body, attach a circle for the head and use shorter ties for the four legs and tail. This will function as a skeleton frame for your sculpture.

2. Stuff the interior, open portions of the wire frame with feltable wool (any wool not labeled "superwash" counts as feltable wool). Wrap a thin layer of wool around the wire and the stuffing together.

3. Use a felting needle to poke through the fibers in a repeated stabbing motion. Poke the needle from the outside of the sculpture toward the center, but try not to go all the way through to the other side. The poking grabs the wool fibers and attaches them together to give the sculpture a solid shape. Poke the fibers in a specific formation to create the outline of the shape of the dog you are sculpting.

4. Add other wool in a variety of dog fur colors to the outside of the sculpture in thin layers. Poke this wool with your needle to attach it to the existing sculpture. This can help you create spots, ears or facial features on the dog.

5. Continue to use your fingers and the felting needles to mold and shape the dog sculpture until it has reached your desired look and shape.

Tips & Warnings

• Position the dog sculpture on top of a felting mat or foam block so you can rest it on this surface while you poke with the needles. This will prevent you from stabbing your own fingers with the needles.

• If you poke the sculpture too many times, it can get hard and become difficult to sculpt. Try to aim for a solid shape without hardening the sculpture too much.

References

• Chushka: Tips for Making Needle Felted Animals
• Cultivating Life: Craft - Needle Felted Animals

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish