Fantastic Felted Cats

Book excerpt: An irresistible felting book for cat lovers! From playful tabbies to fierce black cats, this book shows you how to create felted felines in every shape and posture: crouching, preening, stretching, napping and ready to pounce! Master Japanese felting artist and teacher (and a great cat lover himself) Housetsu Sato shows you how to become an expert in capturing a cat's essential form and character--especially at the kitten stage, when they are full of surprises. In this book Sato teaches you how to: Form the basic shapes and cat body parts Create a variety of familiar cat poses and postures Add realistic textures and markings to the fur Give unique expressions to your cat faces Along the way, he shows you how to infuse your felted friends with a playful sense of "cattitude," including how to incorporate fur from your real kitties into your felted models. Detailed instructions and photos for each cat piece, fur texture and marking make these projects friendly even if you are new to felting. Printable full-size templates help you form the correct shapes and proportions, and brief lessons in cat anatomy help you make your felted cats truly lifelike. Photos showing variations on the poses and markings make it easy to envision your own cat's likeness emerging from your hands.