Tuesday, February 23, 2010

AMV Making Felt!

Today was the big moment, I took all the bags of dog fur (which by the way, I have found that a 1 1/2 grocery bags of fur is about all a dog produces in a month apparently) and made my masterpiece!

So, I used the wool for the top side and used a pattern loosely based off of Native American wool saddle blankets. My Aunt is a major collector of Native American patterns and artifacts and I remember as a child going to her house for a few hours and hearing her stories. She would give me crayons and paper to draw for hours, in a way, this is a dedication to her support of me at a young age.

The underside (the top side while I was felting) has the natural dog fur. This should keep his allergies down and make it more comfortable to him. So the upper side when it is made will be the wool and the underside will be dog fur.

From there, I used dog shampoo as the soap and heated regular water for the lubricant and felted for about an hour or so ( I did not keep wonderful timing on that). It is drying now, I will trim it and go back and fix some of the thin spots either needle felting back in some of the trimmings or with fresh dog fur.

I am pretty satisfied with the look of it and I am ready to trim it, as soon as this process is complete, with organic cotton and add in the straps and leg protectors/warmers for his back legs.

Short Hair Dilemma


I am working on my felt for my AMV project and I ran into the problem that the fur was short hair and would get thin in some places. I was also concerned I would not have enough to make thick enough layers of wool. I was wondering what I could do to fix these problems and I decided I was going to mix some wool in with the dog fur. My original plan was to mix the fur all together but, I did some internet research and it appears that you can layer fur to create different effects (http://www.gfwsheep.com/flatfelt/flatfelt1.html). I think I am going to try this technique and layer the wool on the bottom to provide an even layer and support and put the dog fur on top. When you felt they mix together, so it is not totally against the thought of making an allergen-free dog sweater and it will have more strength and support.