Stag antlers- vanessa mooncie pattern

[Samish]

Hi

I've made the stag head from Vanessa Mooncie's Animal Heads book. I can' get the antlers to stand up, so he looks a bit miserable! 

Does anyone have any ideas? 

I've stuffed it and put wire in as the pattern suggests, but when they're sewn to his head, they just tip over! 

Thank you

[magiccrochetfan]

Hi, welcome to the Ville!  My first thought is you may need some kind of wire in the head to attach antler wires to, to form an armature like inside a sculpture.  

Are you on ravelry?  Here's the pattern in their list, some project notes may be helpful,    https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/stag

[Samish]

Hi

Thanks 😊

I did say I put the wire in as the pattern says. They fall over where they attach to the head, the actual length of them stay up because of the wire. 

Not sure how to stop them tipping. 

[magiccrochetfan]

Right, what I meant was that if you had some wire (or some kind of rigid form) inside the head, then you would have a base to attach the wires in the antlers to.  As it is, you've made the antlers rigid, but you are attaching them to a soft base.  So they flop over because there is not much of a base under them.  

My suggestion is based on the assumption that the pattern doesn't include a rigid form inside the head.  I haven't seen the pattern so my apologies if the pattern does advise making an armature inside the head.  

Did you look at the Ravelry project notes?  

[Granny Square]

Hopefully if the wires don't currently go past the 'skull', you can wind more wire around those ends to extend them.  It seems to me that a possible and hopefully not too expensive solution would be to stick the ends into Styrofoam balls, or into 1 bigger ball  (I have bought some at the Dollar Store in the past) and then add stuffing solidly around the balls.