There is something very magical about hares and I love making them. I have seen a lot of hares recently and in 2010 I was lucky enough to be given an orphaned baby hare (a leverett) to raise. I bottle-fed her and she stayed with us for three months and was released successfully back into the wild once she was old enough to fend for herself.
Hares have been the inspiration for a lot of my work and this is one of a series of British wild animals that I made last year and they are now for sale.
I make the backgrounds with the classic wet-felting technique, building up layers of merino wool fibres and felting them together with hot water, soap and elbow grease. The hare has been needlefelted using the special barbed needlefelting needles which allow you to compact the fibres by repeated peircing. The hare is in bas-relief so has a 3D quality. I then attached it to the dried background and framed it.
Hang it on the wall, or stand it on a bookshelf and enjoy!