During the last quarter of 2023 I finally got around to signing up for a couple of online workshops which I’d fancied doing for a while. The first was Fiona Duthie’s Fibre + Paper. I’d dabbled a little with mark making on mulberry paper and then felting it so I knew how easy it felts, but that’s as far as I’d taken it.
I figured that by committing to Fiona’s workshop it would help focus my mind and make me produce samples…..that worked to a degree but then life got in the way! I still have work to do before I can say I’ve completed all of the exercises from this class but I will finish it in my own time. Fiona is very thorough and there is a lot of great content in the form of written instructions and videos. Although this is not a “live” class there is also plenty of support, both from Fiona and from your fellow students. I found the class very inspiring and now have a far better understanding of how, why and when I will use paper in my work in the future.
These are a selection of fibre + paper samples and my first fibre + paper vessel which I am very happy with.
The vessel (or is it a bowl?) is approx 13 cm tall and was made with mulberry paper and 23 micron Merino. The texture you get from the paper is beautiful and, at only 1cm dia, I was amazed at how small an opening I’d achieved! I still have a selection of Fiona’s papers left to work with so looking forward to making another vessel or two with these.
The other workshop was the Fuchsia Necklace. I’ve always admired the very fine finish that Aniko Boros achieves with her felted jewellery and particularly like the shape of the flower and the use of very tiny pebbles in her Fuschsia Necklace Again, this online workshop wasn’t live but presented as a recorded video of the original live class. I don’t mind this as it means you do not have to keep up with others, you can stop, start and go back over a section if you need to. It also has an accompanying pdf which is very detailed.
Aniko recommends working with 14-16 micron fibre and I was certain my DHG Extra Fine Merino was 14 micron. It turned out to be 19 but, with no one in the UK (as far as I know) stocking the really fine fibre, it was going to have to do! This was another very interesting class and this is my resulting Fuchsia inspired necklace, albeit with non fuchsia colour scheme! This was promptly followed by the yellow and grey necklace which is a design of my own.
With time to spare over New Year I decided to take one final class, this time with Maria Friese. It was seeing Maria’s vessels at the Black Sheep: The Darker Side of Felt exhibition back in 2014 that sparked my curiosity and made me want to learn as much as possible about 3D wet felting. I’ve been a huge fan of her work ever since!
Maria’s Golden Spiral based on the Fibonacci principle
I’d been toying with the idea of making a “Wave” wallhanging for the Waltham exhibition, inspired by Maria’s “Golden Spiral”…….so I went ahead and signed up for the pdf tutorial and this is the result.
My wallhanging Wave is approximately 32cm x 30cm x 1.5cm. It’s created from white and grey as well as several different shades of blue and green Merino and Corriedale fibres and embellished with beads.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing these workshops but I must make time now to finish Fiona’s Fibre + Paper samples before starting anything else!
After kicking myself, yet again, for not keeping my posts up to date here goes with a round up of what I’ve been doing in the first quarter of 2023.
I’ll start with the fact that I’ve pulled out of the Alford Craft Market Shop where I’ve been selling some of my felted items for the past two years. I only went in originally because in 2020 The Big Textile Show was cancelled due to Covid and I had lots of product destined for that show sitting in boxes going no where! Also workshops weren’t happening and so I had plenty of time to make more stock so it made sense to find an outlet and Lynne at the Alford shop kindly found me a space.
Workshops have always been, and always will be, my main focus so with life back to normal in 2022 it was time to leave the Alford shop at the year end to concentrate on what I enjoy doing most.
I don’t always get the chance (or sometimes I simply forget!)to take photos during a class butthese are a few of the workshops I’ve run since the beginning of this year of which I have images…..
In February the Ladies at EYE’s (East Yorkshire Embroiderers) invited me back up to spend the weekend with them in Cottingham. I’d been working on a new illustrated talk for them, originally I’d said it would be The History of Feltmaking but very soon in to my research I realised that title was a huge mistake as it was far too broad a topic for a 45 minute talk! I knew I wanted to start with some of the earliest discoveries of felt known to man, discovered in the Tarim Basin and at Pazyryk in Siberia, and end with present day Feltmakers who are pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with fibre, water, soap and imagination. The difficulty was what to leave out and what to put in from the intervening 4,000ish years which would join those two sections and ensure the presentation was interesting, exciting and had flow. Having delayed starting this project until the beginning of December it was going to keep me very busy over Christmas and in to the New Year!
This naturally mummified baby was discovered in the Tarim Basin wearing a blue felted hat and dates to around 600BCEThis wonderful Felt Swan was discovered at the Pazyryk burial site and dates to the 5th to 4th century BCE. Image source Hermitage Museum
Doing the research was fascinating and also very time consuming. I found myself going off on a tangent many times as one interesting fact led to another, and another……. I’ve now got enough content in the bag for another talk when I get around to sorting it out. Needless to say the whole thing took a lot longer than I anticipated and I only got finished a couple of days before I was due to present in Cottingham! My one and only talk until now has been about my journey as a textile artist and that’s the easiest subject to talk about as it’s what I know, no crib sheets required! This wasn’t going to be quite so easy, not the first time around anyway, and there was the added worry that others might not find it as interesting to listen to as I had done to research.
I gave my talk, A Journey in Felt, to an audience of approximately 120 ladies on the Saturday and breathed a huge sigh of relief with the positive response it received! That night I probably had the best nights sleep for several weeks and the following day we were back at the venue for the wet felted Fairy Slipper workshop.
Thirteen ladies took part in the workshop, 11 making the slippers and two of them opting to create a wet felted picture which they had done with me previously and had asked if they could do again.
Also in February I visited the Creative Stitchers at Great Coates where we spent the day painting, stitching and heat distressing Tyvek fabric to make our Tyvek leaves and 3D seed pods. I love the fact that, due to the process used, these pieces cannot be repeated so each one will always be totally unique!
Something I’m doing much more of now is small group workshops in my home studio. These tend to be groups of friends who book together either for a specific project or, as in the case of Margie, Di, Clare and Jacky, each one came with a certain idea in mind and I helped guide them towards completion. These ladies have been several times for wet felting and in February decided to ring the changes with some needle felting and Tyvek work.
Following a request earlier this year I put together a beginners Hand Embroidery Workshop. I love hand embroidery but tend to stick with using just the same two or three stitches so it was really nice to get back to basics and rediscover the ones I haven’t used for quite some time. Hand stitching isn’t something you can rush so it was also good to sit and relax and generally slow things down for a little while whilst making my samples.
In this class we progress through the different stitches with each student making a sampler which can be used for future reference. The sampler consists of 18 stitches (some basic and some not so basic!) and students also get a template of flower shapes which they can take away and stitch at leisure using their newly acquired skills.
The next images are of the first of these classes which was held at the Alford Craft Market Studio in February.
Later that month I had Emma, Kirsty and Sue come along to my studio for the beginners hand embroidery class.
Layer, Stitch & Burn is another fabric and stitch workshop but this time using the sewing machine and with the added excitement of “burning” our fabric! The first time I saw this technique being demonstrated was many years ago in a video by a Canadian textile artist called Susan Lenz. Susan works in many different mediums and styles and uses this technique for her In Box and Window series.
Last month I took Layer, Stitch & Burn to the Sleaford Embroiderers at their monthly gathering at the Hub in Sleaford. This is a fun, experimental workshop using a variety of synthetic fabrics. Techniques include cutting, layering, bonding, foiling and free motion stitching. Finally, once everything is held firmly in place, we burn away our background using a soldering iron & heat tool to leave a lace like effect. Most of the ladies would go on to finish their work at home but here are a few photos of their work in progress.
The next set of images show the beautiful Nuno Felted Scarves made by eleven ladies in Barton under Needwood, Staffordshire. These were all created by layering Superfine Merino with fine silk fabrics. Its always interesting to see the different colour combinations students put together and how some really go to town with the added elements such as prefelt, yarn, etc to create additional texture.
Every scarf made in these classes is totally unique and I’m always thrilled to see how happy students are with what they have achieved. It’s even more rewarding knowing, as with this group, that none of the ladies had used this technique before!
My most popular workshop currently has to be the Superfine Merino Roll Edge Collar with brooch fastener. I’ve done a couple of these in my studio recently and last month I travelled down to run the class in Ashby Magna, Leicestershire for Region 8 of the International Feltmakers Association. Ten ladies attended the class and achieved some really wonderful results.
It was a lovely surprise to see that Fiona had also brought along some fabulous wet felted birds and a hare to show me. She made these at home using techniques she had learnt in my Chicken Workshop in Arnesby, Leicestershire last October…..we were all very impressed!
Fiona’s wonderful 3D wet felted birds.
All in all it’s been a great start to 2023 and in between workshops I’ve been working on some creative projects of my own so will include those in future posts……I just need to keep up the momentum now I’m back at it!!
Inspired by rock pools this Wet felted Abstract Wall Hanging, made from natural shades of Bergschaf fibres punctuated with orange, is very textural and tactile. It’s a mixed media piece combining pebbles, shells and paper with free motion stitching and hand stitched colonial knots. Size approx 54cm diameter x 10cm deep.
This weekend I am up in North East Yorkshire teaching wet felting at the E.Y.E.s (East Yorkshire Embroiderers) annual Residential Weekend Retreat. It’s being held at a wonderful venue called Cober Hill, overlooking the North Bay Area of Scarborough.
Out of the 18 ladies attending sixteen are creating wet felted pictures while the other two are here doing their own thing. We met up on Friday afternoon and after a brief introduction got straight on with planning our designs and laying out our fibres.
After a three course dinner the ladies were straight back in the studio and hard at work rolling, throwing and generally fulling their work.
I’d been warned that some of the group would be working all hours and I found myself staying in the studio until 11pm with Ruth who was the last woman standing!
This morning I heard one lady was in the room and working at 6am……I certainly wasn’t!!! Most of us resumed work straight after breakfast adding needle felted elements and beginning to free motion or hand stitch into the felt.
There is some fabulous work being created and I reckon we are going to have a really impressive “show and tell” tomorrow lunch time! Watch this space…….
A quick catch up on the past week’s workshops which included wall hangings and vessels…..
Wednesday saw me driving back down to Podehole for the second session of my Wet Felted Wall Hanging workshop with the Spalding Embroiderers. Last month the ladies created their wet felted backgrounds and added some needle felted flowers. This week they concentrated on embellishing their work with hand stitching…..unfortunately they are not permitted to use their sewing machines in this particular hall which is something I’ve never come across before!
One or two of the ladies had done some homework since we last met and added free machine stitching. This is just a small sample of the wonderful work being produced…..
Once again it was a pleasure to work with such an enthusiastic bunch of ladies and as you can see from the photos the standard of work is terrific! I’m already looking forward to my return visit in September when we will be experimenting with Lutradur and Tyvek to produce a forest floor themed 3D picture.
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In the studio this week I had a visit from Annie and Marisa. Neither of these ladies had ever felted around a resist before but both were keen to have a go. They certainly rose to the challenge and produced two wonderful wet felted Merino bowls with multicoloured necks and embellished surfaces……
On Saturday I was given even more of a challenge when Sue, with daughters Adele and Sharon, visited the studio. They had said they wanted to make 3D vessels but made it very clear from the outset that they weren’t prepared to settle for something straight forward or easy. They were only interested in making complex 3D shapes, the sort that require a book resist or differential shrinkage. When you consider that none of these ladies had ever done Wet Felting, either 2D or 3D, prior to this visit what they achieved in 6 hours was pretty amazing!
Today saw me driving down to Colemans Craft Warehouse in Rushden, Northamptonshire to deliver a beginners workshop in Wet Felting. Colemans is a large out of town, retail outlet crammed with all manner of crafting equipment and materials including card making, stamping, fabrics, Felting, beading, knitting, etc. There is a cafe area on the ground floor while the spacious, well lit workshop area is on the mezzanine above the sales floor.
There were nine ladies taking part in the workshop and for all of them this would be their first introduction to Wet Felting. We began by discussing the basics of creating a piece of flat felt and everyone made an abstract sample using Merino fibres and adding snippets of yarn, fabric and silks.
Above are the pieces prior to Felting (apologies for the one that’s missing) and below are the pieces after Felting.
After lunch the ladies were given a choice. They could either make a picture, using the skills they had learnt earlier, or they could learn another laying out technique and make a flower. It was quite spooky how one side of the table chose the picture while the other side chose the flower…..I hadn’t realised the split until I looked at this photo!
The results were wonderful…..
The ladies all said how much they had enjoyed the day and all of them are keen to do more Wet Felting which is terrific to hear. Colemans have invited me back to do another Wet Felting workshop for them on Saturday 14th April so I’m looking forward to seeing some familiar faces and hopefully some new ones too. Next time we will be creating felted landscapes and learning how to incorporate pre felts in our work.
Many thanks to Jo and the staff at Colemans for making me welcome and to my enthusiastic students!
Lincs In Stitches 