This little pig is a little cliche, and a little different
“When pigs fly” is a somewhat over used animal idiom. So much so, that when I thought of creating a pig with wings, I almost stopped myself from being cliche. Just today, scrolling through social media I saw another needle felted pig with wings. I had just finished taking photos of my own sculpture, and was glad that there was not much resembelence.
My pig is sitting sraight up looking at its viewer. I created a pair of brightly colored butterfly wings instead of birds wings. I think that the fragility of the butterfly wings increases the unlikely nature of flight. It also provides the figure with a more magical fairytale quality.
“A Little Cliche” is needle felted wool over a wire and quilt batting armature with glass bead eyes. The wings of this piece required some experimentation. I started out wet nuno felting the fibers on cheesecloth. I was not as happy with the amount of fiber on the backside of the wings, so I started to work them with needles. This unfortunately broke some of the netting, so I had thread ends sticking out. My solution was to felt that nuno felt to a thin layer of prefelt. This encapsulated the netting (and broken threads) and provided a nice amount of soft coloring on the inside of the wings. I spray starched and pressed the wings to provide a little more stability, and then added them to the pig figure.
An Original
The other small sculpture I completed this week is Singing Shroom. There isn’t much that is cliche about this figure. He is a continuation of my mini pieces, though he is a bit larger than the others. This anthropomorphic fungus is singing a tune. He is needle felted wool over a quilt batting wrapped chopstick segment, and secured to a natural wood base.
As Promised
Last week I promised to share some ornaments that began life as wool dryer balls. Here are two that I’ve created so far for this year. These ornaments are more like “painting” with the wool fiber on the curved surface of the dryer balls. Each is finished off by stitching and felting a yarn loop on the top.
