How to needle felt - eyes and pawpads

Now for the final touches.

There are many ways to felt eyes, and I usualy felt them straight onto the sculpture right where I want them but it is a little easier to felt them onto the pad and then line them up on the sculpture.

Make 2 eye shapes from small balls of black fleece

- lift the peice from the foam and turn it often to prevent it becoming too embedded in the pad.

Take two small peices of white fleece and roll them between your fingers to make a small sausage shape.

Felt them into a C shape on one corner of the black eye shapes - leaving a small rim of black as this will be the edge of the eye.

Take two slightly larger peices of fleece in the eye colour - blue in this case.

Again roll them into a sausage shape and then felt on above the white C shapes on each eye.

The final effect is better if you can leave a tiny bit of black showing between the white and the blue - it looks more cartoony that way.

If this C is too fiddly you could add a circle of blue and then a smaller circle of black ontop to make the pupil.

Now take a tiny peice of white felt and to the side of the pupil area felt a small downwards pointing triangle shape - this is the glint in the eye.

Position each eye and felt it into place - you can felt it in in a slightly curved shape to make it look more eyelike.

For the pawpads roll 4 large(ish) balls of fleece and 16 smaller balls

Felt the larger balls onto the paws near the bottom

Take care here not to push the needle all the way through to the top of the paw as this will take some of the black fleece through and give you black spots on the white paw.

Add the smaller pawpads, 4 to each paw

If your paws are small or the pads quite large it can still look OK with just 3 mini pads

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