
IFA Conference
This is a guest post by Anne H. (penguin), one of our forum members who recently attended the IFA Conference that was held near her home. Thanks for the post Anne!
I’ve only been felting a couple of years, and I’m certainly no expert, but when I saw that the International Feltmakers’ Association was holding their annual conference (with workshops of course!) only an hour away from me I couldn’t resist. I was a little nervous going on my own as I’ve done a few residential courses before (for embroidery) but I’ve always known some of the people there – however, the group of approximately 65 ladies (and one man) couldn’t have been friendlier, and I had a wonderful time. If you ever get the chance to go, I highly recommend it!
The whole event was also extremely well organised and there was something to do all the time – although of course you didn’t have to join in with everything. Shortly after we arrived an aluminium jewellery workshop started, and later that evening there was a mini-marketplace with a few members’ stalls and a bring and buy charity sale, and Annemie Koenen, one of the tutors and a remarkable felter, had brought an entire shop with her from Holland – lovely dyed wools, tools, soaps, silks … most of us wanted to go home with the lot!
The meetings are held alternately somewhere in the UK and somewhere … not in the UK. Next year it’s Sweden. I wish I could go! We had someone from Canada and someone from Iceland, and two or three from Holland, although most people were UK based.
The two workshops I did were with Zsofia Marx – hat making, and Chris Lines – Felt Faces. The one with Chris was on the first day and I learnt an incredible amount. I was going to use a pic of my hubby, but he’s got a fair bit of hair and a beard, which would have made him a very tricky first subject. So instead I ended up doing a brooding looking popstar – Chris couldn’t remember who hewas but I liked his face!
One of the ladies from another workshop came round and said, ‘Coo, who’s HE?’ I managed to keep a dead straight face as I said, ‘Oh him? That’s my husband!’ The look she gave me was priceless. ‘I’ll be round yours tomorrow!’ she said … but then I couldn’t hold the straight face and had to confess that I had no idea who it was really.
Chris, the tutor, was horrified that I was using Carex hand soap and gave me a lecture on why olive oil soap was the ONLY thing to use. So why had I taken Carex? Because Zsofia, the tutor for the sculpted hat workshop, had said to bring liquid soap.
Well that evening myself and another lady who was going to be doing the Zsofia workshop next day decided we had better create some liquid olive oil soap – so I made a kind of gel in a tub with a lid, and Pat made a big (lidless) tub of soapy water, which she spent the whole of the next day trying to get people to use so she could get rid of it! Zsofia was most amused at what we’d done and said the soap I had bought would have been fine! A classic example of how every felt maker seems to work differently and swear by different things.
I’m still using my olive oil gel now and it’s great! I have to say that I did actually find things felted much better and much more quickly with the olive oil soap so I’m now a convert!
I didn’t get ‘my face’ finished during the workshop hours so I skipped the talk that was laid on that evening and went back to the workshop to finish off. Just as I’d finished my effort, another lady came in to finish hers, so I stayed and kept her company until bedtime. Unfortunately she’d used Superwash for her background without realising and of course it WOULD not felt! In the end she needle-felted the rest to her background and it looked fantastic so all was not lost.
The hat making workshop was terrific – Zsofia, a Hungarian-born lady now living in Holland and speaking superb English, was delightful. She started us off by showing us a variety of hats she’d made and then had us all trying them and telling each other, frankly, if they suited or not, while we looked in the mirror in the ladies’ toilets – as there were no mirrors in the classroom! This meant that most of us ended up not making the hat we liked the look of sitting on the table in the workshop, but the hat that actually looked good on us! I wanted to make the hat with the crazy rose sticking out of the side but it looked terrible on me! (two back on the right of the photo):
So I made a much more simple, pleated hat instead.
’Thanks to some excellent advice from the Felting and Fibre Studio forum I’d taken a selection of colours too. My intention was to make the hat purple with some peach decoration, but that was shouted down by Zsofia and the other ladies, so I stuck my hank of turquoise/green stripy merino roving on my head and said ‘What about this then?’ and they all said that suited me perfectly, so my purple hat ended up green! So much for trying to move away from my comfort zone – but at least it goes with a lot of clothes I’ve got, and my glasses; I always gravitate towards turquoise!
The hat was laid out on a 2D resist with coarser wool inside and the finer, coloured wool on the outside – except that the layout was inside out so the merino was against the resist and the other wool, in my case Corriedale, was on the outside.
Corriedale wasn’t the best choice as something a bit courser would have been good, but I had a lot left over from the Chris Lines workshop so that’s what I used!
Zsofia took us through the whole process from laying out, to wetting out and rolling, rolling, rolling … and then eventually cutting out the template (see photo below).
Then came fulling the hat into a 3D shape, first getting rid of the ‘seam’ from the template, and then gradually shaping the hat through rubbing until we had a fairly shapeless and ugly cone!
Then the magic happened as Zsofia showed us how to pleat the hats and set the pleats using steam.
I must say I’m really thrilled with the result, and was amazed that we all got a finished out of the process and that they were all so different!
After the second workshop we had the ‘Gala dinner’ where we were all asked to wear something we’d felted. I took a couple of scarves and also a completely mad, over the top jacket which I’d made for an exhibition a couple of years ago but never worn. I mentioned this to a few people on previous days and the answer was basically, ‘Look luv, if you can’t wear it here, where can you?’ so I braved it and it elicited much interest and some complements, so I was glad I did!
The following day we had a big show and tell in the main hall where we got to see everyone else’s work. I didn’t photograph everything but I was especially taken with the tops and dresses from the Vivienne Morpath two-day workshop:
And of course the variety of Felt Faces we managed to produce between us:
as the AGM, (which was relatively painless as these things go), and then lunch and homeward bound.
All in all a terrific weekend and I’m so glad I went. I hope I’ll be able to go to many of these meetings in the coming years.
26 thoughts on “IFA Conference”
Really enjoyable read! Inspiring too! Thanks 🙂
Glad you enjoyed it Karin!
That must be a great experience Anne! Lucky you ! You made wonderful things and learned a lot, and made new friends. I like your pic of your ‘ hubby’.
Thanks for your story 😉
I have now really done a pic of hubby – very different … but I love it .. .and him. 🙂 It was a great experience!
Was it difficult to make a beard ?
Rather fiddly! 😃
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post and looking at your photos Anne – thank you for taking the time to write it.
What a wonderful experience you had. The felt face is terrific as is your hat.
I giggled about the response to your nervousness about wearing your felt ‘Look luv, if you can’t wear it here, where can you?’
Yes, I like olive oil soap too. All soaps work but some create so much foam that it’s hard to see what you’re doing and it’s very hard to rinse out. One not so good thing about olive oil soap is that if it’s very green you can’t leave your felting overnight because the wool may take up some of the colour and end up looking dingy.
That was funny and soooo true, the ‘Look luv’ comment! And yes, I have come to realise that soap is really variable. I didn’t know that about not leaving it in overnight though so thanks for the tip!
great article. Thanks for sharing. the hat is beautiful, and the pinning technique for the felt faces is very interesting. Love the results of that class.
Glad you enjoyed it Kathryn! I can certainly recommend taking a workshop with either lady if you get the chance.
Can you show or tell me the proces of making the pictures ready for felting in 3, 4 or 5 couleurs? You wrote: Chris had done all the digital manipulation of the original photos for us, but she showed us how to go about it at home, and I will definitely be having a go in the future … perhaps with the one of my hubby! I would be verry pleased if you want this to share with me.
With love, Lilijan Linssen
2017-05-12 9:24 GMT+02:00 feltingandfiberstudio :
> ruthlane posted: “This is a guest post by Anne H. (penguin), one of our > forum members who recently attended the IFA Conference that was held near > her home. Thanks for the post Anne! I’ve only been felting a couple of > years, and I’m certainly no expert, but when I saw th” >
Hi Lilijan, I’m afraid I can’t go into detail of it as it’s Chris’s intellectual property and she has taken a long time to develop it. She’s now teaching internationally so hopefully you will have an opportunity to do a workshop with her one day and get the detail on doing these faces. It’s a great technique and she’s a fine teacher so I hope you do.
Great post Anne and happy to read you had a wonderful time at the conference. I totally identified with your fear of turning up alone, I went through the same at my first AGM 4 years ago but everyone was so friendly you can’t help but make new friends and now you are bound to meet some of your new friends at the next AGM! 🙂 I love your portrait and hat too, looks like your trip was a huge success, well done!
Thanks Teri – you’re right, I can definitely look forward to meeting some of the ladies again at another AGM – probably not next year as it’s in Sweden and I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, but maybe the year after if it’s back in the UK!
Glad you had a good time! I love to know the IFA goes different places other than the UK 🙂
Yes, the IFA are working hard on expanding their international membership and of course to do that they need to be truly international, including with the meetings! I don’t know where you’re based but I hope they turn up there soon! 🙂
I’m in the UK, Anne! So I guess I’m privileged to know they have regular meetings here, but like you, I think they need to go international more often so they can honour the “I” in the IFA 😀
Aha, in that case look out for a uk conference in 2019 – it’s a blast! 😃 I don’t know where it’ll be yet but I hope I can make it.
Thanks for the post Anne, looks like a great time was had by all, great memories too. Very clever ‘hubby’ pic.
Thanks Tracey – it was indeed a great time. I’d do it again at … the drop of a hat. ‘-)
What an awesome experience! Thanks for sharing it all with us. Your portrait and hat are terrific. I would love to learn the portrait technique. I’ve made hats with Teri Berry and have another class waiting to be completed. I’m with you about leaning toward turquoise. Can’t seem to help it. I look forward to seeing more of your work.
If you get the chance to do a Chris Lines workshop, go for it! I can’t believe how much I learnt in one day, it was terrific. Hurrah for another turquoise fan too!
Anne, thanks for doing the post. I really enjoyed your story and your face and hat turned out great.
You’re welcome Ruth, and thank you. I’m very happy with the results!
Fabulous post, thank you for sharing. Wish I wasn’t the other side of the globe…….
Thanks Sara! Where are you? Aus? May be they’ll go there one day… But I hope I’ve won the lottery by then if they do, so I can go along!