Day of the Tentacle Part 13

Back of the beak now closed off. Have sealed the tentacles as I realised the stuffing could work its way out into the body and leave them all floppy. Now just need to make a body and figure out the best way to attach it.

Day of the Tentacle Part 12

Beakenation has been completed. Have recycled some flat foam sheets that came with Malifaux packaging for support. Seems to be holding up quite well - ring support is also holding firm. Wiring on the legs is not as firm as I would like, the aluminium sculpting wire is definately a trade off of strength for lightness and non corrosion. Given main material is wool felt can't afford to have any kind of wire that might cause staining further down the track.  Will probably have to use wires to suppprt tentacles when it is displayed.

Day of the Tentacle Part 11

This thing has gotten rather unwieldy - my own fault for making it so big. The stuffed ring seems to be holding the tentacles up quite well, it has quite a few rounds of aluminium sculpting wire inside to strengthen it. Next stage is to make the beak and attach it to the centre of the ring.

Day of the Tentacle Part 10

Long tentacles are done - now just have to figure out how to hold it all together.

Day of the Tentacle Part 9

Next stage is dyed and ready to go. I have pieces for the two long tentacles, the beak and the centre ring which should hold the upper tentacles up and stop them from crushing the beak.

Day of the Tentacle Part 8

The tentaclation continues - almost there six and a bit done. Hopefully will have the arms done tomorrow and will be able to cut and dye the next stage over the weekend.

Day of the Tentacle Part 7

Still slogging away - lost count of the times I have stabbed myself with the needle or more painfully felting needle. Have decided not to decorate skin side yet, probably best done at the end so I can make it consistent plus I will know how much time I have left (thanks Scott for that very sound advice).

Day of the Tentacle Part 6

So tentaclation has begun - and I realise this is going to take ages. At this point I begin to question my decision to make the thing so enormous but I am committed now and will battle on to the end.

I was originally just going to sew on tubes of felt to make the suckers but when I tried needle felting over the join to see if I could make it look more seamless it had a really cool effect. This is of course going to make the whole process take even longer but well worth it for the effect.

Day of the Tentacle Part 5

So getting colour on the eight arms was pretty much a full day's work. First the felt is washed in hot water with mild soap to get rid of any leftover sizing from the manufacturing process. I started off scrubbing them by hand but ended up just simmering them on the stove in soapy water. Then it is washed out and put in a mix of vinegar and water to soak for a bit.

You take it out leaving most of the vinegar water in and lay it down on some cling film. Next it is painted with food colouring mixed with water to dilute it.  Once done roll it up in the cling film and steam for 15 minutes.

I made the mistake of rolling the first tentacle across the short axis which made the darker colours from the center bleed across to the light underside. Subsequent tentacles were rolled up on the long axis and came out much better. 

I also dyed some scraps to cut the suckers from and some roving for covering the seams and making patterns on the surface.

Day of the Tentacle Part 4

Have cut out the eight arms but have run out of felt to make the two longer tentacles. Will have to get another bolt of felt - although the arms will give me plenty to be going on with in the meantime.

I have cut them a couple of centimeters larger all around to allow for the felt to shrink a bit during the dying process. Usually I cut after coloring felt so shrinkage is not a problem but given the scale of this project it makes more sense to cut first.

Next step will be painting and steaming the arms.

Day of the Tentacle Part 3

Test tentacle number two worked much better - looks more muscular, less elegant. So now I just need to pull it apart and cut eight copies from felt.

Been trying to figure out how to stop the weight of the upper tentacles from crushing the beak once they are arranged in a ring. I am hoping a firmly stuffed tube of felt (like an inner tube) will do it.

Day of the Tentacle Part 2

This is test tentacle number one. I like the skinny pointyness of it but it is more octopus than sqiud. Plus it tapers off too quickly and I either need to reduce the base circumference or make it longer neither of which I want to do. So I need to try again but with less tapering, maybe down to half the original circumference instead of a quarter.

Day of the Tentacle Part 1

Working on a micro scale Kraken for the Burrinja Open Studios exhibition. Have switched to hand painted felt due to carpal tunnel doom from too much giant scale crocheting.  Have been having a lot of fun with felting - am using pre made wool felt and dying it with food colouring using vinegar as a mordant. This has the advantage of being kitchen safe as there are no nasty chemicals involved (and me safe too I guess).  The vinegar mordant can split or change the colours (especially purple) which can be a pain when you are after a very specific effect but on the plus side gives you an excellent sense of anticipation and surprise when you unwrap it after steaming.

Anyway after a whole heap of pondering and sketching I decided to base the Kraken on a Colossal Sqiud. Not least because I had seen the preserved one in Wellington - utterly amazing by the way. 

Now I always seem to start off thinking I will create the pattern in one go but it never seems to work that way. I inevitably end up starting somewhere  (often the toes) and building the scale of the rest of the creature in relation to that bit.  In this case the tentacles have become the starting point and the rest will follow once they are all in place.

I knew I wanted the eight arms to be about a metre long but had a lot of trouble trying to figure out the diameters for the top and bottom and the amount of taper I needed.  As a result I decided to make a test tentacle - I am often too lazy to make test versions and just tend to wing it but there is a very large amount of felt involved here not to mention all the hand painting.

Next time I will share the results of the first tentacle test and where it goes from there.