Recently my students have been asking for classes using armatures, this is NOT my forte, so I decided to do some research and I thought you might benefit from what I found.
Working over an armature can be done on large and small scales. You can use them in small or large pieces but if you are making something large you will really want to use one. The first benefit of using one is that your work becomes posable, so you can move the limbs, neck, tail, whatever you put wire in, and it will stay where you move or pose it. The second reason to use one is that it helps with larger projects. When you needle felt something large it can take a very long time to firm up, and can also still just never really stand or be sturdy unless it has wire inside.
When I work on small to mid sized items with wire I don’t find I have a problem with breaking needles on them. I do think that with these larger ones in the videos here being such a thick wire it is likely to happen more often, but you should always have a bunch of needles when you start a project, never start something like this when you have only one needle left especially if it’s for an important gift or has an urgent timeline! 🙂
This YouTube channel hasn’t posted in over a year so I guess she’s not continuing to teach but they are a great resource so here is the second part for you as well:
I hope you find these useful as well. There are many tutorials for working over wire so do have a search online for yourself to find the technique that works best for you! I find it most useful to search for gauge of wire including type ie florist etc to find something you like working with. Also research what you can start off with on top of the wire, there are many different ideas for what to put on next, some use tapes, some add pipe cleaners and some use specific wool types. You might like to see how to create a realistic skeleton, some like to use printed pictures to scale their work against.
So I hope you will enjoy your time looking up how to make this tool work for you!
Happy Felting!
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