tiger tiger ....WIP - furring the head ....

this photo shows tiger's upper head fur is in one piece, almost ready ... eye liner is needed here ...



I have made the best possible use of fur, without constructing a 'white' tiger head and doing air brushing ... which I have never actually done! Mary is playing with 'snakes' made from fur salvage edges...



and here the eye sockets have been lined, I carefully hand-sewed black fur around the sockets, leaving the tear ducts free. These are covered with chiffon, now.

tiger tiger ....WIP - furring!

tiger by numbers, Mary watches me at work ...
this is the third time I have used this method to make a pattern for furring, but the tiger head is the hardest one yet ...



so Mary knows its supposed to be a tiger head, but she doesn't think it's very tigery. So she pretends to be a frog ...
I must not loose any pieces ...



i carefully start to cut shapes from four different kinds of fur and begin to sew then together. Matty parks cars on her drawing of children playing in our street ...



Behind You! This is beginning to work, esp when the fur is pulled tight as it will be when all stitched down ... I like to do an much sewing as possible and avoid glueing which is not as strong in many ways ...



and here, using some very careful hand sewing on account of the curves, the muzzle and cheek fur is starting to take shape ...



this is hard work, and requires thought, but the result is making me happy ... i am not an airbrush artist, but this shows you how you can create a tiger head using only commercial printed furs ...

Rat Head Gets Furry .....

as usual in my fursuit creation, some pieces of old laura ashlet curtain fabric wrapped around the form help me with my pattern making ...



I then use it to cut the fur, adding seam allowance ...



here, there are two sections of pieced together fur, the scalp section and the muzzle part. Neither are sewn to the head at this point, altho the laura ashlet scalp pattern helped me sew the ears symetrically to the head with upholstery thread.



that is why the mouth parts look very slack, and the lower jaw is onlt pinned to the chin area. i fashioned some eyes from card board based on my clients digital drawing of his character ...



i hope these are in roughly the right position to line up withthe holes in the foam. As these eyes re longer, i am not sure tear ducts will look right, but a black boarder should look quite effective ...



what do you think ?