I am very excited to present to you my greatest needle felting challenge yet. He is modelled on a beautiful young Shetland sheepdog (Sheltie) called Schubert (Schubie)! The real dog is very much loved by his human mum and dad and his dad wanted a surprise gift for his wife (Schubert’s mum) for Christmas!
I rarely do commissions as I try to avoid the stress of it but having spent quite a bit of time admiring the real Schubert I had been wondering how it would be to needle felt a mini one and quite fancied a stab at it! 🙂
Schubert has so many tones to his luxurious fur so I spent quite a bit of time blending wool colours. He also has very long fur so I really put into practice my ‘adding long animal fur’ techniques.
I started off wrapping corriedale core wool over a wire armature. Then I added paw pads and then some detail on his face before starting on his belly fur and working from his tail end towards his neck with merino wool. I did his wispy feet hair and tail last. Please see the work in progress videos below for more info.
In an attempt to keep him as authentically ‘Shetland’ as possible I managed to include some brown Shetland sheep wool in his coat and his whiskers are made of black Shetland pony tail hair all the way from Scotland.
As with all my creations it took many hours of needle felting and love. I am very pleased with the way he turned out and I hope you like him too 🐶🐕😆
Here are some short videos of the process, followed by the final photos of Schubie.
Here is the process of the armature with the body shape sculpted over it in wool:
Here is the Schubie journey:
And a quick video showing the making of his tail:
And here he is 🙂
Fit to be loved 
Great reading yourr blog
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You are so clever Amanda your projects are magnificient
Deb😍👏I could never be as good as that
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You are so kind. Thanks for your encouragement Deb. Don’t limit yourself though. We all start somewhere. 😊
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I know all of these other remarks are true so I’ll just say “yeah, What They said”
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Hehe thanks Linda 😊
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This is amazing. I am a newbie to felting and wanted to try it since I watched it being done on Kirstie’s Christmas. I was lucky to go to a demo at my local haberdashers and bought a small kit for a bumble bee brooch. Start small eh? So, as with everything I have been ordering books and found your blog. I think that what you make is incredible with a lot of attention to detail and I hope that I could be a good as you one day. Thank you for sharing your tips. All the best, Arlene
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Amazing, fabulous work amanda😍
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This is so amazing! I hope to one day be able to make as characterful and detailed creations as you 🙂
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Aw thank you Hayley!
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Gorgeous Amanda another stunning creation 🎄😍
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Thank you so much Deb. 💕😁
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very pretty
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Thank you Judy 😊
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Beautiful
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Thank you 😀
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WOW – stunning!
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Aw thanks so much Annie 😊
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It’s beautiful! So proud of you!
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That’s so lovely of you Carla, Thank you 💕😁
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That came out beautiful!
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Thank you so much Chris 😁
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Just achingly adorable!
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Thank so much 😁
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