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 🙂
Have you ever seen a real red squirrel? Aren’t they adorable! Though they can be shy and hard to find. Thankfully I managed to get to see some at a British wildlife centre recently but unless you live in certain places of the UK and abroad you may never be privileged to see one in the wild. But you can now have your very own miniature in your own home..
Fit to be loved 