by Meredith
19. April 2008 15:56
Once all the faces were tacked down into place I started filling the spaces in between with more wool and the hair wefts.
The majority of this work was done with the gown on the dress form to ensure that it would look right. The hair wefts were draped onto the dress and hand-sewn to the fabric.
Later, after I filled in the spaces with additional wool, I trimmed up hair so that each was a length I liked. Similar to how the faces were arranged by color, I filled in with darker colors of the wool as I reached the bottom of the gown. I also ripped up the bottom edge of the dress, fraying all the edges to help add weight to the form.
The final piece of construction was to add some beading. Because souls as I imagine them are mystic, ethereal things, I wanted to have a little bit of sparkle integrated within the wool. I tried out many different patterns and beading techniques and eventually settled on scattering the beads out into some general lines versus having them clumped together or worked into specific patterns.
To plan the layout I used some scrap tule, draping and pinning the lines into a general flow that I liked. Similar to applying heavier and darker amounts of wool at the base of the gown, I also applied heavier amounts of beads.