Needle-felted Face

When I began this figure for my January Blog animation, the head was a hoop of wire, filled and felted with coarse wool. I removed the stitching which was applied for the animation and covered the head with Corridale eggshell fine wool.

Initially, I mapped out the features’ positions. The eyes are two equal sized rolled balls of white wool. A small dip is made in the middle line of the face and the eyeballs are felted into place. The nose is a rolled sausage shape of eggshell coloured wool.

White wool is used to mark where the mouth needs to go. This is in around the bottom third of the face. Again, rolled sausages of eggshell wool are used to mark the ears. As there are two, try to use equal amounts of wool. The top of the ear goes just above the eyeball and ends near the bottom of the nose. The tricky thing is trying to position them in the same area at the side of the head. Remember that they are further back from the profile than you think.

My character is going to have brown eyes so again, because there are two, try to use two equal amounts of brown wool. Roll them into balls and position into the middle of the white eyeballs and felt them into place.

Next, use two equal sized pieces of black wool. Make sure they are smaller than the amount of brown wool as these are to become the eyes’ pupils. Any staggling strands of wool can always be trimmed off with small scissors.

By applying a thin strand of black wool across the top of the eyeball in an arch shape, the eye lashes are created. Using two eggshell sausage roll shapes of wool, arch them top and bottom of the eyeball to make the eyelids. It is quite easy to make an elderly looking face by leaving deeper creases under the eyelids. For a younger person, more work needs to be done to blend the eyelids smoothly into the rest of the face.

The eyes sit in the mid-line of the face. After handling, the top of the head can become a bit squashed so here I built up the top of the head again with extra wool to correct the proportions and shape. The nose can be needle-felted into a more triangular shape. At the base of the nose, try to shape it into two balls and then make two holes underneath for the nostrils.

The eye brows stretch in a slight arch from one end of the eye to the other. They are straighter towards the bridge of the nose and dip lower towards the ear. Masculine eye brows are bushier than feminine ones.

The colour of the lips was made from mixing red wool fibres and eggshell wool fibres. You have probably guessed by now that the fibres are rolled into a sausage shape and applied around the white wool that was used to mark the mouth; namely the teeth. A little black wool is added to the corners of the the mouth and under the top lip to suggest shadows. To make the eyes appear a little more alive without resorting to glass eyes, a tiny amount of white wool is added just under the eye lashes as highlights.

Once the hair line is added. the needle-felted head starts to look more complete. High numbered needle felting needles, such as number 42, were used to keep refining the surface and shape of the head and facial features.

Adding the hair is a good opportunity to bulk out the back of the head to create a more spherical shape. Again, handling can squash the head making the back too flat. Work on defining the shape of the ears can be done now.

Although I liked the colour of the lips, on reflection, the mouth seemed too large and too far to the left hand side of the face. I unpicked the mouth and began again. I’m still not too certain about using red for the lips but feel happier about the shape and size of the mouth. It’s ok to take wool out if you are not happy with areas.

I like a bit of bling, so with the short gamine hairstyle, I have sewn some tiny pearl-like beads into the hair as decoration. This figure is based on a fairytale character so I can play quite a bit with how she is expressed.

With constant evaluating and refining you can create a face that is very basic to something more realistic. With more time I think I will work on the chin area a little more to define it. I hope this has been helpful if you wanted to have a go yourself.

Thank you for reading my April Blog. I hope you have a wonderful start to Spring.