Welcome gamers to the behind the scenes of how i made cowboy Tenna. there's going to be a lot so I will put it under the cut so you don't come to hate me and all that i stand for
starting off: the draft
now this isn't the first felting project i've done that had a wire armature, but it was the biggest one. Like i mentioned in my previous post Tenna stands roughly 23cm (9 in), which means he was going to be very top heavy. I tried to counter act that by putting magnets in his feet but....well i'll go into more detail later but suffice to say it didn't work.
I start all my project by sketching out a few designs and a "life size" drawing of the figure (that i can use as a basic foundation to get sizing, shape, and frame right). I knew that i wanted chaps on Tenna but i had a couple ideas on what to give him as tops/accessories.
ultimately i went with an open vest with a sheriff badge and felted on a collar, buttons, sleeves, and front seam to imitate a button up shirt. as much as i liked the idea of the bandana or even the bolo tie, the normal button down was the easiest option and i only had 2 months :p
The frame is made of of both 18 gauge aluminum wire and some floral wiring (the floral wiring is very stiff, good for parts that won't move while the aluminum is great for parts that will be posed + support)
(ignore the bad quality i took these at like 2 am lol)
Now if you've never felted something with a wire frame before, let me give you some advice. You need to cover your wire in some sort of material that will not allow the wool to move around too much. Some people use beeswax, others use paper wrapped floral wire, and i used hot glue cause it's cheap and it gets the job done best in my opinion. It comes with it's own set of challenges (namely everytime i stuck the needle into the glue it came back out covered in it and i had to constantly clean my needles. the colution is just not to stick the needle in the glue but easier said than done) but i digress. I took long strips of the base coarse wool and tightly wrap them around the wire and begin felting with one of my bigger needles (my 36 triangle with some help from my 36 star and twisted star)
I used a coarse core wool as the base cause it felts quick and felting arms and legs is a paaaain. A few problems when felting small tubes with wires running through them is that the you can't stab directly at a 90° cause then you run into the wire, so you have to go at an angle. And you can't go too deep with the felting because you'll end up sticking the needle all the way through to the other side which doesn't get a good felt and make it all fuzzy (and if you're dealing with different colors, it can cause the under layer color to be pulled through now making a patchy, fuzzy mess of colors and felt).
This was the longest part for me and ultimately the most difficult simply because of how many factors i have to keep in mind while felting and the amount of time it takes to firm up the wool on such a small surface area. Technical skill level isn't too bad it just takes forever to felt it. Fortunately i had practice on this with my starwalker project, so while a pain and time consuming it wasn't hell on earth.
His head was the simplest part of the whole process, it just being a rectangle of wool that I covered in a layer of purple. i actually miiiiight have over felted it (it was very stiff) but ceste la vie or whatever. made the nose by using the base wool i had used everywhere else and rolling it into a cone and not going to lie i think i might have overdone it on the nose size by just a smidge mayhaps. maybe he's just compensating for something, idk...
fun fact, i only used blue felt on the parts that were not to be covered by his chaps because i am lazy and also didn't want to felt anymore than i had to on his legs. his bakery in the back, on the other hand, i did put a....decent amount of time into (and it took a lot more felt than i was expecting. I had to go back later and add more padding back there) and took my time shaping it lol. it took some time getting the shape right because i knew it had to be enough to fit with the chaps and smooth out the overall shapes of the body but i couldn't go overboard with it or else it would just look silly.
So originally my plan was to glue magnets onto where Tenna's feet would be and cover them in wool so that he could stand on his own. And i was fairly confident in this endeavor (my starwalker has magnet feet and so do a couple other projects i've made) when i glued them on and began felting his feet. Well somewhere along the way i must have felted too much wool or maybe the magnet shifted off center or something because by the time i had gotten the base of his foot felted down, i could no longer feel the magnets doing their job. So uh Tenna has 2 useless magnets in his feet :/ i debated trying to go back and fix it but i was already under crunch and that was far more work than i wanted to, so i just said fuck it and continued forward. cowboys look cooler when they're leaning on stuff anyways....
made his little hands out of the same base wool as the rest of his body, leaving unfelted strands so i could attach it to the arm. Like any smaller detail on a felting project, they were annoying to felt especially because i have to make 2 near identical copies and i never remember to keep tack of how much wool i use for something. So i'm left just going "well, that looks about right. hopefully this isn't too much and this piece doesn't end up slightly bigger than the other!" (my twisted star and normal 38 gauge star needle same in handy here)
This is also the point where i started to fill in and finalize the overall shape and form of Tenna, adding more mass to the chest and tapering/shaping it to that upside-down triangle body shape, giving him shoulders and some more thighs, smoothing out all of the wool with a finer gauge needle so that the holes wouldn't be so big and obvious, adding purple to his forearms, etc. Lot's of hours with me trusty 38 and 40 gauge triangle needle here.
And now for the part i was lowkey dreading: drafting patterns and sewing. See, i wanted to have Tenna be wearing actual clothes, not just felted-on flat panels of color. And i am an avid sewist (seamster? one who sews for fun and whimsy? whatever you get my tokyo drift) with quite a few big project under my belt like ren faire dresses and jackets and the such. What i don't like is making patterns because i always tend to over complicate them as a way to compensate for a misplaced concern of my own intelligence. I just decided to say "fuck it, we ball. not like it's a waste using 1/2 sheet of felt" and went from there.
I drafted his vest using the tried-and-true method of clingwrap covered in painter's tape and just drawing where i think the panels should roughly be cut. Made some minor adjustments after carefully snipping off the pattern and made a mockup using the felt to see what i could further fix and adjust. Got a pattern and shape i was happy with, cut out the pieces on the red felt, pinned it all together, and proceeded to back stitch the whole vest (yes i know back stitching is for embroidery, no i do not care i do what i please and no being on earth can stop me from using my frankenstein's monster of techniques on my projects)
The chaps were easier to draft for the pattern but took a lot more time and effort to complete because i wanted to be extra and give him both fringe on the side seam and a little star kneepatch cause i thought that'd be cute as fuck. which it is.
Before i attached the chaps i went ahead and sketched out some stars on the knees and felted some of the last remaining bits of my yellow wool. i made a whoopsie and used a felt tipped pen to sketch out my stars instead of a sewing pen that disappears with water or something, so i had to make them slightly bigger than i wanted to cover up the black lines. ah well
The main hurdle to jump with the chaps was how to attach the damn things, cause i wasn't able to sew the chaps inside out, flip them to hide the seam, and slide them onto Tenna's legs like one would do with most other sewing projects. His feet were too bulky and i was afraid that i wouldn't get the desired tightness that chaps have (they're meant to hug the legs, not be baggy and hide them). that meant i had to sew them directly onto Tenna, with very little seam allowance and another layer in between for the fringe. the worst part was definitely the pinning, took me 20 minutes to get it all in place so that nothing moved and to ensure that i wouldn't accidentally miss some fabric on my stitches.
took me about 2 hours with pinning to hand stitch his chaps on as i kept having to readjust the fabric every new stitch (i missed the fringe a few times and had to go back to make sure i sewed it) but it was well worth it. I think my favorite part is the chaps with just how clean they look and the fringe :Dc
After that it was just some of the final smaller details!
I used some of that same red felt sheet to make a shirt collar and sleeves, just cutting own a couple rectangular strips and felting it down. The center shirt seam was some red wool i had, stretched out into a very long thread and felted down with one of my smaller gauge detail needles (a 40 triangle i believe). Added some very small bits of gray wool to act like buttons on the shirt, just to give it more depth.
Same technique for the front shirt seam for Tenna's rca arm hair cables (which i had to include because that it my favorite hc design detail!!! it is so cute and me wanting to incorporate that detail was the driving factor in giving Tenna a shirt with the sleeves rolled up), cut a thin strip of the brown felt sheet and felted it on as the belt, added some gray soles to his boots and finished shaping those, gave him his iconic belt buckle, and finally felted on his little sheriff's star badge onto the vest.
And at by this point i was feeling good, ecstatic even. I had finished my biggest felting and most complex felting project with 1 day to spare before christmas and i could not wait to present it to my secret santa!
and then i remembered that cowboys wear a very iconic piece of headwear. that i had just totally forgot about.
cool. well, back to the felting grind i suppose.
i only have pictures of the very end of the hat making process and maybe that's for the best. The shaping on this thing was not my favorite part about this project and i wanted to challenge myself by adding a darker brown to the underside of the hat (giving it that much more depth and shit) with the challenge here being to make sure that i didn't felt the darker brown underside of the brim into the lighter brown topside. Which if i had the right needle wouldn't have been hard at all but i do not own a crown needle (a needle that only has barbs towards the tip, thus allowing for more shallow felting. handy for thinner pieces or if you just don't want the felt to go super deep), so very small shallow pokes it was!
i also ran out of the lighter brown wool right as i was needing just a bit more to finish shaping the crown of the hat. in which case i said "eh, good enough" because i had spent 2 months on this little guy and i was starting to go crazy. and the fact that the deadline was in like 8 hrs at this point.
so i shaped it enough to call it good, slapped that hat on his head and felted it in place, took some dark purple wool and gave him a little smirk, and then superglued his head onto his body.
And he was finally finished!!!!!!!!
Overall, i really did have a fun time making him, thinking about all the cute little details i couple implement and how to go about attaching things, the timeline of when to do certain steps. Learned a lot doing this project and i think my felting skills have definitely improved over the course of it. I can say for certain that i am no longer scared of bigger projects after tackling this in all under 2 months.
I have already shipped off Tenna to his new home with caroles-knight (he is still in transit and caroles has promised me pictures when he arrives. I may share if i am feeling selfless haha) and i hope he gets to them safely!
if you read this far, thanks for that. it was a lot of rambling i know, but i hope that this can be used for other potential felters as a sort of reference. I went through a lot of different blogs and posts when making Tenna just to get a feel for how others tackled similar problems and what techniques they used. If you have any questions about anything (this project or felting in general) definitely feel free to ask. i'm not a professional, i just like having really niche hobbies, so beware on that front i suppose. and the fact that i might not reply quickly :p
You knocked it out of the park with these I couldn't have asked for a better gift! The Mettatenna is so sickeningly sweet I'm going to develop cavities <3 I love just how cozy they are, enjoying each other's presence and basking in their love.
And the fun gang just destroying the TV Time Kitchen set-!! Kris and Susie just feeding off each other's chaotic energy while ralsei tries in vain to get a handle on it all. Tenna's just happy to have the kids bake with him :')
Gift for @caroles_knight over on Insta as a part of the Mr. Tenna's Marvelous Mystery Exchange!!
This was my first time ever participating in a secret santa, so i was low-key nervous but caroles_knight had some wonderful ideas on their wish list and the moment I saw cowboy Tenna, I KNEW I had to bring him into reality :Dc
This is both the biggest and most detailed felting project I have ever attempted and I don't know if i'll ever do one this big again (maybe i will, just not with the 2 month time crunch haha). BUT ☝️ i am super proud of how he came out!!!! He is 23cm (9 in) of rootin' tootin' full blooded cowboy ready to lasso your heart caroles_knight <3
I will make a post about my whole process (i remembered to take pictures yay) because a lot went into making him and i always enjoy looking at the bts of other people's work :)
needed a small scale project and wanted to do something deltarune for a hot sec. i'm debating making one of those little tenna bugs I keep seeing people draw (they're so dumb (affectionate) and perfect for felting)
he's got magnets in his feet so I can sick him wherever I please :)
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