wool tops

A couple of weeks ago, at a workshop with Mandy Nash, I was introduced to Bergschaf wool. Since taking up felting I’ve been used to working with Merino and wasn’t too sure if I would take to the coarser, hairier Bergschaf but I love it! Not only does it felt very quickly but, being supplied as carded batts, it makes laying out a lot quicker too. Having previously made a vessel with it, this weekend I thought I would try using Bergschaf to make a felted wall hanging. I’ve revamped a design I did a couple of years ago, making it larger and adding grasses. The new version of Yellow Poppies is approximately 20″ x 15″.

My original Yellow Poppies felted picture

Laying out the new design

Wet felted Bergschaf and Merino wool picture entitled Yellow Poppies.

New version of Yellow Poppies.

The poppies and smaller flowers were made with Merino, the stalks are knitting wool and the detail was added with free machine stitching. The black backing fabric is garden membrane which is great to use as it doesn’t tear or fray.

Reverse side of Yellow Poppies

Today I joined 8 other felting enthusiasts at the Village Hall in Hutton Buscle near Scarborough for Jenny Peppers “Avanced Pods” workshop. I love Jenny’s classes, she’s a great tutor and explains/demonstrates every step very clearly as we work through our creations.

Two examples of Jenny’s work displayed with the shells which were her inspiration.

We all started out with the same size/shape resist and selected our colours from the huge stash of Merino wool on offer. We began by making a sheet of prefect using three different colours and this would be used to make “craters” in our pods. Working with our prefelts and resists we started with our inner layer and worked outwards, layering our wool tops before adding the spikes and tails.

The resist is wrapped in white Merino and the spikes attached at either end.

My resist is wrapped in white Merino and the spikes attached at either end.

My top craters and embellishments are added

The top craters and embellishments are added to my piece.

The next stage was to place our outer craters where we wanted them and add silks, wools, snippets of prefelt, etc as embellishment before felting our spikes.

After lots of rubbing the dreaded rolling begins……and Jenny sees to it that her students don’t skint on the rolling!

Rolling, rolling and more rolling…..

Once again the company was great and day past very quickly with Jenny on hand to encourage, inform and see to it that we all manage to complete our work on time.

Two of the ladies had to leave early and unfortunately I didn’t get pictures of their finished work but here are the other seven.