Our first online course, Wet Felting for Beginners is wrapping up this week. We had a bunch of great students and I wanted to show you some of their first felt creations. The course is presented in a forum format just like our regular forum so students can ask questions, share their work and interact with each other.

Shrinkage Samples by Agy

Sample by Agy

This is work from Agy. Didn’t she have an awesome idea on an easy way to see shrinkage visually? Agy said about the course, “I loved the class. I had done some small wet felting projects (one day classes) before but had a hard time getting them fully felted. I was spending too much time just to get a crooked half felted piece. Not any more! Your instructions and videos helped me understand the felting process much better. There are many ways to felt and many ways to teach them. Yours worked for me. Your love for felting is obvious and contagious.”

Agy also said, “The only thing I would recommend is that, for people new to wet felting, to make their first felting piece without too many different inclusions. To pay attention to the texture and shrinkage of your piece and build from there. You have a lot of great information here!”

This is Vicki’s piece of felt with a lovely peacock feather embellishment.

Sample by Carol

Sample by Carol

Sample by Carol

And here are three samples by Carol who tried out lots of different embellishments and fibers. Carol’s comments about the class were: “I, too, did not find the forum process very intuitive. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this class very much and learned a lot. Particularly Week 2, where we tried the 10″ x 10″ variations.  I really gained a lot of confidence and knowledge about my own felting techniques by working through them.  I recommend you consider making Week 2 the first lesson.”

Carol had an idea for following instructions while learning: “I needed to follow the step by step instructions closely until I had completed about 3 of the examples. I printed out the Week 1, and found it fairly difficult to keep flipping through the many pages of steps with wet, soapy hands.  Therefore, I made my own 2-sided Quick Reference sheet of just the steps, without the commentary. I printed it out and put it in a plastic sleeve, and VOILA! Easy checking along the way.  Thanks for all your work in pulling the material together so many of us could learn wet felting in the convenience and comfort of our homes. It made the long winter seem much shorter!”

Here’s a sample from Sunny.

And a sample from Mica. She reported “I think that the information provided, both written and video, is good for a beginner. What little I knew was obtained from a book or 2 on the subject. However, as a visual person, it helped me greatly to see the process. Also helped to have information on edge finishing and calculating the amount of wool needed for a project. This class served to knock out any niggling doubts I had in my mind about what the end result should look and feel like, and increased confidence in my abilities.”

Sample by Sam

Sample by Sam

Completed Notebook Cover by Sam

Sam made two similar samples and then used the second one to create a notebook cover using instructions from Zed who is our master notebook maker. Here are Sam’s comments about the class: “I have truly enjoyed this class and it has exceeded my expectations! I thought I would learn a couple of new tips or tricks, but instead I have become a more confident felter. I have paid hundreds of dollars for classes that were taught in person and didn’t learn nearly as much as I have here. I would like to thank all of the instructors for their timely and detailed information and for even answering questions that did not particularly pertain to information covered in this course. The only things I could recommend for future classes are to number the pages on the printouts and make a detailed list of all the things that will be taught in the class description on your website. Particularly week 3, I would have been even more excited when signing up had I known that we were going to be learning to use batts, pre-felts and how to hand blend. I look forward to taking many classes with you in the future!”

We would like to thank all the students who signed up and hope that everyone enjoyed the class. We will be presenting another session of Wet Felting for Beginners in June so we’ll be announcing the exact dates soon. Remember that this course is online, self paced with class materials being presented at the first of each week for 3 weeks. And then there is extra time after the 3 week class to view the materials and use the forum. There are no specific times that you have to be online so it works for anyone from around the world.

If you are a teacher or tutor of fiber arts, please contact us if you are interested in using our forum format to present a class of your own. We have the tutor/instructor information packet ready to send out if you’d like more details. Just sign up on our contact us page and give us information about what class you are interested in teaching. We’ll send you the packet and work out the details from there. We would love to offer a wide variety of classes so let us know what your specialty is.

I will also be announcing my upcoming online class Embellishing Felt with Surface Design Techniques – A Mixed Media Approach in the next couple of weeks to start in mid May. There are going to be four modules that last 4 weeks each. The first module will be Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Lamination. I’ve got a short promotional video that will tell you all about it. So keep your eyes peeled as the announcement will be coming soon!