A recent workshop saw a welcome return to my facilitating face to face felting sessions.
I was asked by our local felting guild, Feltmakers Ireland to run one of their Sunday Sessions. These are social woolly gatherings. They generally take place in the morning on the second Sunday of each month and last 2.5 hours.
I was given a free reign to present whatever topic took my fancy. I thought a fun morning which I called ‘Demo and Do’ might fit the bill. The topic was felt embellishments. My idea was to demonstrate two basic techniques, then quickly show samples of how I had developed these techniques in my own practice to contextualise use, after which the members could have a go.
The first technique was ‘Cracked Mud’ which I learnt many years ago from the wonderful Lyda Rump. This was quick and easy to learn so I allocated a smaller portion of the session to completing it. If you are unfamiliar with the technique, here are two of the samples I prepared for the session. I used three colours, red, grey and black. Alternating between the red and black (top and bottom layers) totally transformed the finished samples when I cut into them:
The second technique was the creation of a basic wet felted geode. I was taught this technique by Marjolein Dallinga at a superb workshop she gave when she travelled to Ireland many years ago. This technique was a bit more complex so the group spent longer working on it. Again, so that you can have a visual on this, here are my samples. I used the same colours as for the cracked mud technique samples. The top of the photo shows some of the off cuts from the finished samples:
As time was short, I decided to make up packs which the participants could purchase if they did not wish to bring along the materials. These packs comprised of a number of prefelts. The cracked mud prefelts were industrial and the geode prefelts were handmade; three colours over six layers. Each one was different (I bore easily so I wanted variety when I was making them). Each square measured 20cm and weighed around 15 grams. Here they are prior to wetting out:
And here they are after they had been lightly pre-felted. They were all so colourful:
There was a lovely party atmosphere and altogether 20 worked on samples while 3 chose to observe. Here are some photos from the morning. Many thanks to Clodagh McDonagh of Feltmakers Ireland for taking these photos:
Just look at how focussed we all were! I promise there was a lot of laughter and misbehaviour too!
A number of the participants were new to wet felting and luckily they all sat together so I was able to give them a bit more time and answer their questions following the demonstration. I am very proud of them all as each one produced finished samples.
Here is a photo montage of the participants’ work. Many of them brought their geode pieces home to finish but all of my ladies who were new to felting got theirs finished in time. I am really proud of how hard they all worked. I also prepared an electronic PDF of the technique for the participants which was sent to them later in the day.
It was a real treat to resume these activities and to meet up again with such a lovely group of women.
Have you ever gotten scissor happy with your felt! Do you fancy sharing your results? I would love to seem them. You can upload your photos here.
Thanks in advance and happy felting!