Needle Felted Pig: The Snout Runs Straight Out From the Forehead

Look at a pig skull and the thing that stands out is a line: from between the eyes to the end of the snout, the profile runs dead straight. There is no brow, no dip, no step. That single unbroken line is the whole difference between a pig and every other round-bodied animal, and it is the thing beginners get wrong.

What almost everyone does is build a ball for the head, then stick a smaller ball on the front for the muzzle. That leaves a shallow valley where the two meet, and a valley between forehead and nose is a bear. This article is mostly about taking that step out.

What you need

• Core wool — 25–30 g for a pig around 9 cm long
• Pale fawn or oatmeal corriedale — 10 g for the surface
• Cream, pale grey and a pinch of dusty pink for blending
• Dark brown or black scraps for nostrils, eyes and trotters
• 38 gauge needle for shaping, 40 gauge for surface and fine work
• Foam pad or brush mat, and a cocktail stick
• Optional: 4 mm black glass eyes on wire

Building the pig

1. Roll the barrel. Build the body as a squat drum about 8 cm long and 5 cm across, rounded at both ends and near enough the same width all the way along, with a slightly dipped back. Work it until it barely gives under a thumb; see how to needle felt a ball.
2. Shape the head as a wedge, not a ball. Roll a separate lump about 4 cm long and needle the front two-thirds into a blunt wedge tapering slightly towards the nose. Check the profile from the side constantly.
3. Take the step out. Lay a thin veil of wool over the join between the domed skull and the muzzle and needle it flat until a ruler laid along the profile would touch from between the eyes to the nose tip. This is the step that matters most.
4. Flatten the snout disc. The end of the snout is a flat circle, cut off square — not a rounded point. Stand the head on the mat nose-down and needle straight into the tip until you have a hard flat disc about 12 mm across with a defined rim around it.
5. Press in two nostrils. Two small holes set roughly central on the disc and a little apart, not crowded down at the bottom edge. Push the 40 gauge needle deep into the same spot twenty or so times and the fibre compacts into a real hole. Darken each with a wisp of brown.
6. Attach the head low. Pigs have almost no neck and carry the head low and forward. Splay the loose fibres at the base of the head into the front of the barrel, then blend the join until the shoulders run into the cheeks.
7. Add four short legs. Four stubby cylinders about 3 cm long, short enough that the belly sits close to the ground, attached well under the body rather than at the sides. For a standing pose that will not sag, run a wire armature down each leg.
8. Ears. Two flat triangles felted on the mat, about 2 cm at the base and left soft along the attachment edge. Set them wide apart, on the sides of the head rather than the top.
9. Eyes and trotters. Small dark eyes set high and well back, close to the ear line and far from the snout — see needle felting eyes. Darken the last centimetre of each leg into a cloven trotter, splitting the tip with a deep needle line.

The straight line, and how to check it

The profile is the test. Hold the head at eye level against a plain background and look along it from the side. The surface should drop into a gentle curve at the forehead and then run out perfectly straight to the snout — one slope, no hollow.

What a dip does

A hollow between brow and nose reads instantly as a bear or a small dog. It is why a pig can have the right colour, body and tail and still look wrong: the eye reads the profile before anything else.

Fixing one you have already made

Do not carve the forehead down; add instead. Lay a thin sheet of surface wool from the brow forward over the dip, needle it flat with the 40 gauge, and repeat until the line is straight. Building up is easier to control than digging out — a recurring lesson in needle felting mistakes.

Colour: a pig is not pink

Pure pink is the second thing that makes a felted pig look like a sweet. A live pig is a dusty pale fawn — greyish beige skin under sparse pale bristles — and it only looks pink in bright sun.

Blend your own: roughly six parts cream, two parts pale grey, one part dusty pink, pulled apart and recombined two or three times until no streaks show. Add a little more grey along the back and shoulders and keep the belly and inner legs paler. Method in how to blend wool colours. If you want spots, a Gloucester Old Spot is black patches on that same fawn, never on pink.

Ears and tail

Ears settle the breed. A Landrace or a Gloucester Old Spot carries big soft ears that flop forward and half cover the eyes, so needle only the base and let the tip hang free. The Large White, the Tamworth, the Berkshire and wild boar all carry them upright and pointed, which needs a firmer triangle and a base needled all the way round. Choose one; a half-raised ear looks like an accident.

For the tail, roll a wisp of surface wool between damp fingers, needling as you go, into a rope 5 cm long and barely 3 mm thick. Wind it tightly round a cocktail stick, hold it in the steam from a kettle for a few seconds, let it dry, then slide it off. Hold the stick and keep your hand out of the plume — steam scalds worse than boiling water does, and a few seconds is genuinely all it needs. It keeps the curl. Attach by one end, high on the rump.

Common problems

• It looks like a bear. There is a dip between forehead and snout. Add thin layers over the join until the profile is one straight line.
• The snout looks like a nose. The tip is rounded rather than flat. Stand it nose-down and needle straight in until you have a hard disc with a rim, then press the nostrils.
• It looks like a sweet. Pure pink wool. Reblend towards fawn with cream and grey, and lay a thin veil of the new colour over the whole animal.
• The legs sprawl. They were attached at the sides instead of underneath, or the body is too soft to hold them. Firm the barrel harder and reset the legs beneath it.
• The tail uncurls. The rope was too thick or not needled firm before winding. Thin it down and steam it properly on the stick.

Variations

• Piglet. Half scale, which is one eighth the volume, so 3–4 g of core rather than half of 25. Proportionally longer legs, much bigger ears, and best made in a litter of three.
• Gloucester Old Spot. The same fawn body with three or four irregular black patches, one over an ear and eye.
• Wild boar. Dark grizzled brown, upright ears, a raised shoulder ridge and a coarse spine crest lifted with a reverse needle — see needle felting fur.
• Sleeping pig. A barrel lying on its side with the legs tucked, no armature needed. The quickest version, about an hour.
• Middle White. Big erect ears and a short, sharply upturned face — the one British breed where the straight snout line does not apply. Worth building once, because doing the opposite deliberately teaches the rule better than following it does.

The barrel body and short legs are the same structure as a felted sheep, and the profile problem is the mirror image of the one in a felted dog, where the step between forehead and muzzle is exactly what you need to keep. If the basic shapes are still fighting you, needle felted animals for beginners takes them one at a time.