I have finished another doll! This makes 24 needle-felted dolls or sculptures that I have made in just under five years. Elizabeth wanted one more Hobbit "souvenir" to go with the final film of Peter Jackson's trilogy. With the first movie, I made a doll of Lord Elrond (E's very favorite Middle Earth character!). With the second it was a doll of Beorn. So, she wanted Tauriel for the third one. I have been sort of hankering to make another female doll, since the last girl that felted was Carmen Miranda (about three years ago!). We looked at a few photographs, but it was one of the Concept Art paintings that really inspired me to try this character. I made a model sheet in Photoshop and set to work.
Since we have spent most of January at home, either because of extreme cold or ice, I have had a lot of felting time! This really paid off, as I started this doll about three weeks ago. She is made of merino roving felted with .40 and .42 gauge needles. She stands 9-1/2" tall, weighs 2 ounces and took approximately 57 hours to complete.
 The back of the needle-felted doll. See more photos by clicking on the "Wool Dolls" tab at the top of this page. | Elizabeth wanted to have a few "different" pieces on her (meaning something that was not made of wool), so she made the cuirass (chest armour) that peaks out from under Tauriel's dress out of a real piece of leather. The laces across the front are some real re-enacting lace, and her pendant and hair band are made from jewelry wire and chain. The diamond in the pendant is a crystal stud. Finding Tauriel's hair was a bit tricky. When I started felting dolls like this, Mohair was not hard to find. All kinds of sites online offered multiple staple lengths, textures and colors. Now it seems that there are barely any of those places left, and mohair is hard to come by in natural hair-like colors. After what looked like a search that was going to end in disappointment, I was able to find the perfect hair from a Shop on Etsy. It arrived just one day before I needed to use it, and it worked beautifully. Tauriel's hair is anything but easy, so I had about six hours of work on that alone. Pretty fun! So, I just need to felt one more doll to have hit 25! Thorin is going to be next, and I've started him already! I am really hoping that I'll be able to finish another doll before Spring, as that would mean that I have State Fair entries all finished in advance. Novel idea that. I mean, I'm always putting finishing touches on as we're heading down to enter! |
I have a lot more photos of this doll. You can see some of them by clicking viewing the Fogleberry Photo Gallery. There are a LOT of pictures on our website, so you can check them out by CLICKING HERE. More coming soon.
RSS Feed
