Fea: Project Construction, Part 1

Making the faces took a lot of experimentation but I finally developed a system for I could produce them fairly efficiently and with good results. Many of my early attempts had to be reworked so that they looked better and matched the later version.

In general, the method I worked out was to layout several layers of the dyed wool. Each layer was spread out so that the “grain” of the wool was in a different direction. With enough layers so that the wool was about an inch thick I would then felt the layers together with my multi-needle tool. With the lightly felted square I would then pinch in the major features of the face, tacking each into place by using the single needle to push the wool into the foam work surface. I then used the single needle to felt in the rest of the facial details: pushing in recesses like nostrils and wrinkles; teasing out obtrusions like eyebrows and noses; cutting in holes like eye sockets and mouths.

The next step of the project was to arrange all of the faces onto the dress. With the base-fabric gown draped on a dress form, I arranged each of the face with the lightest colors towards the top and the darkest at the bottom. The goal was to add a weight to the garment, to show Fea’s heavy burden while weaving in the souls of the fallen. In addition to the color arrangement, the faces were also rotated and laid out to create a spiral pattern; the faces wind their way up Fea’s form.

Each face was square and built to look straight on, but I found that with pushing the wool around and adding filler where needed, I could tilt the faces into different directions. After having the general layout planned, I squished and shaping each face, grouping them so that they were looking out in different directions. One of the problems I discovered was that I had to work with the gown on the dress form for all planning. Once I laid the gown flat to work on felting the faces down, the pieces would lay differently; so what didn’t look right laying flat looked great hanging up.