Pooh-Bah – a closer look

I thought it might be interesting to have a closer look at the way I am trying to bring Pooh-Bah and his ridiculously deep and fluffy fur to life (honestly, I think if I tried to find the body of the dog through the fur I’d lose my arm to the elbow!). It’s very much being invented on the spot, and although the approximate idea is the same, each animal is taking it differently.

So here you see, probably, stage three or four.

I’ve done the eye and the muzzle and lower jaw, quite densely. I tried to find some of the shadows of the ear and under the chin, and the highlights around his ruff.

And from that point it was really a case of “scribbling” my first layer of stitches in very sloppily worked Cretan Stitch. No, that’s unfair. At this stage I’m not trying to be very precise in my stitch placement, so “scribbling” is a reasonable approximation. But I’m trying to balance that sense of a layer of colour with leaving enough space for the next layers and the sense of the depth of fur. I’m not being precise, but “sloppy” isn’t quite right either!

Now look at Pooh-Bah at a somewhat later stage.

The next layer of stitches is in a lighter thread (Pooh-Bah is a creamier colour than the photo I have), and I’ve used much shorter stitches around his muzzle and his face, to suggest the shorter fur. As I move outwards, I’m trying to stitch into the layers below, tangling my stitches to help build the fluffiness.

You can see the same thing happening with the tail, here. There’s a sort of basic “scribble” layer, in this case in something more like Herringbone Stitch – although, if you think about it, it’s not hard to mutate Herringbone into Cretan! I used two strands of stranded cotton for the scribble layer, but I’m beginning to go over it in single strands. I’m hoping that when I come to the final layer, I will be able to tangle it into previous layers enough to camouflage the order of work.