Pre-felt

Eight of the finished vessels displayed on a window ledge. looking particularly alien-like

A few of the awesome finished vessels!

Several months ago I discovered a website showcasing the fabulous work of a lady called Jenny Pepper. I was very excited to see that Jenny holds workshops, not a million miles away, and immediately got myself booked onto two of them. Earlier this month I rode up to Scarborough to attend Jenny’s ‘Spiky Vessels’ Workshop which was being held in the beautiful village of Hutton Buscel, just a few miles outside of Scarborough.

The fibres have been laid for the basic vessels and now the spikes and craters are being added.

Hard at work applying the spikes and craters.

The workshop was fun, informative and very inspiring. Jenny demonstrated various techniques for creating spikes, holes, craters and frills to add to a 3-D vessel. The day was very well structured but at the same time the session was quite relaxed and we were encouraged to work at our own pace rather than trying to keep up with each other – great for me as I always seem to be the last to finish! It was fascinating to learn how useful ‘pre-felt’ can be and since coming home I have made myself quite a supply of it in various colours ready for future projects. The pieces we made were really designed to be ‘samples’ but I think we all came to see them as more than this once they were finished….they seem to have an alien quality and every one of them was unique.

My vessel in the making

It was a great day all round and lovely to meet the other felters. I am looking forward to meeting up with many of them again at Jenny’s ‘Multiple Resist Workshop in July.

My finished 3D vessel complete with spikes, holes and craters

My finished vessel

I can’t believe its been 2 months since my last post…holidays and family commitments have kept me away from the PC for a while but things are getting back to normal now so its time to catch up on what’s been happening ‘craft’ wise.

At the end of April (the day before we were due to fly out to Greece for a 2 week flotilla holiday) Robyn was due to hold another felting workshop. Although I knew I really ought to stay at home and do the packing I managed to somehow escape to Robyn’s studio for the day and had a great time (as always) with the other ladies as we all got creative with bits of fluff!

I wanted to do something different and create an abstract picture in this session but wasn’t sure how to approach it. Robyn suggested a great method which began with creating small piles of ‘carded’ Merino, combining different colours/shades. When I had sufficient piles of wool these were laid out and used to create a large sheet of multicoloured ‘pre-felt‘.

The pre-felt has been cut up and rearranged.

The next stage was to cut the pre-felt into squares and rearrange it, in a different order, onto a plain background, adding bits of scrim, nepps and silks and completing the felting process. There was so much pre-felt I ended up making two pictures, one square and one rectangular. I enjoyed the process and was really pleased with how the pictures turned out.

Close up of the first picture showing the embellishment

Once we got back from holiday I picked up the pieces again and added some sari silks, a few seed beads and some machine embroidery. I feel like the pictures have taken on a bit of a ‘sea-side’ feel and, with having the two week holiday sandwiched between starting and finishing them, they now remind me of happy times island hopping in the Ionian.