I make a lot of wool felt animals for my Etsy shop, so I had plenty of wool felt and roving for the project and I wasn't planning on buying any materials for this project. When making a new pattern, I draw it out on paper, then I cut the paper shapes and trace them onto the felt, cut those out and stitch them together. I've been making patterns this way since I was a kid and and generally the finished product looks pretty much as I'd pictured it.
This dog was no exception; the color of the felt was perfect and the shape looked a lot like the real dog if he'd been completely shaved- voila! The trouble started with I started felting on the hair; I planned on adding some tan baby alpaca roving onto the ears and tail and a little on the face and legs...
It looked awful! The tan was way too dark, and the contrast between it and the blonde felt was striking. It looked ridiculous. I set is aside and considered throwing it away. But then (thank goodness!) I was struck by inspiration; I continued needle-felting the alpaca into the dog form, trying to make it look as much like real dog hair as possible. In the end I had a full-coated tan shih tzu!
I was so happy with it that I made three more right away- each one has a different color coat, but I used the same pattern for all four. All of them are now for sale on my Etsy shop- along with a whole lot of other cats, dogs, squirrels, foxes, and more!
