Part 2 Day of the Dead Chihuahua

I left off at working on how to attach the back legs. Once I figured that out I embroidered the designs on the legs. You can see my pencil drawings of designs I thought I might use for this project.

 The pads on the back paws were way too small and I ended up changing those later.

The head took the longest to make out of the whole piece. It was 2 steps forward and 3 steps back, scrap everything and start again kind of process. Below is a not quite right head with a too short snout. 

 

I had to leave it alone for a few days and step away before I decided to start a brand new head. It's really hard to give up so much work and start again, but it had to be done. See how short the snout is? Ugh! Lots of swearing.

 Gussets on the body made them a necessity on the head too for the proper shape and size. I made about 4 heads before I got the proper size and snout length. ( my art tends to have over large heads, so I did that here too) Then I had to figure out how to add the color markings. I made a black head with a tan under the chin gusset and then drew out the markings, cut them from tan felt and wrapped them onto the face. I stuffed the head to get the proper shape and sewed the markings on.

All the markings positioned and held by pins to check for fit.

Most of the markings sewn onto the head. Just needs her nose and ears and some face sculpting.

I gave her a little pink splotch on her nose but later took it off cause I felt it looked too cartoony. The giant needle sticking out of her face is a sculpting needle. It's used for needle sculpting cloth doll faces. I used it to further shape the top of the snout. I also added spots for the whiskers at this time.

Stay tuned for PART 3 HERE. If you missed PART 1 you can find it HERE.

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