Anatomy of a Needle felted Squirrel

Everyone needs a skeleton, unless you're a worm.

This squirrels skeleton is formed with wire and the toes are formed with cloth coated florist wire.

Next, the toes are wrapped with wool. I used my Sophia's wool, because it still has a good deal of lanolin in it, and wraps so nicely.

 Nevertheless, making toes is a pain in the behind.

 Next come pipe cleaners to wrap all the wire and help the wool adhere better when it comes time to add it.

 

The form requires a large amount of wool, wrapping and poking with your needle and wrapping and poking some more.

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 This white wool won't show, it is the core wool, used to built up the body structure.

 When the form is as you wish it to be, you can begin to add your "fur". This is the wool that will show on the outside and I have used Sophia's wool once again for this, along with some purchased wool of a Merino grade. A lovely light grey color.

  The cool thing about building on an armature like this, is that your creature is completely pose-able.

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If you didn't know any better, you may think you were looking in a taxidermy shop at a splayed squirrel.

Yikes!

After fleshing out the creature to some degree, I have added her head. I make the heads separately and then attach them to the wire neck with stitching.

 She is still much to skinny.. So I continue to add more wool.

 It took a while to fatten her up... and a lot of wool! James thinks she is still too thin, like a rat, but in observing the squirrels in our Hollow, they are not chubby, but slender and fit.

 I needed to replace my 2 gossiping squirrels that I sold at the Doll show a few weeks ago. That is why I made Dinah. Normally, I combine stitching with Mohair and  needle-felting to make my Hopalong Hollowfolk, but Dinah is different, as you can see.

  In my next post, Dinah will awe you with her oratory....