Woolen ears for a pussycat

This little pussycat needs her woolen ears.  I cut a very large length of Pendleton wool duffle fabric following a rough “ear-like” template.  I added textile dyes to create the fur shades  of this cat, which takes a full day to dry completely. The face painting is not completed, but I was eager to show you this next step.  Adding the woolen fur won’t keep me from continuing to add details and refine the painting of the face. 

I tack the wool with straight quilting pins to get a sense of how much excess fabric I want to work into my impression of cat fur.  I use a 5 inch doll needle and Cordonette thread to stitch the wool through the stuffed doll head, creating the ears and the fur around the face.  I will shape the ears by cutting away the excess fabric and pleating or tucking to give expression.  Once that’s done, I can decide what I want to add as furnishings (and will trim away or fringe the gessoed canvas from the initial face mask that are sticking up as strange triangles) i’ll again use textile dyes to shade the inner ears and the ear edges.  Because this will be a Norwegian Forest Cat, there will also be a nice fluffy ruff added to the neckline made from angora or cashmere fibers.

At this phase, she looks just plain goofy, but I decided to share the weird as well as the attractive parts of my work process.