Felt Vessel Workshop
I had my first workshop of the fall season last weekend. It was a fun one, Vessels. I like vessels because they do not have to fit anyone when they are done. They can go completely sideways from the original idea and still turn out great.
I had 5 lovely ladies for the day. They had a great time( or seemed to at least) and I had fun too. I love to see people marvelling at the magic of felting and go from very sceptical to amazed at what they have made.
In this class, they all started with the same round resist. Everyone always asks about size. In this case a good sized dinner plate. Very technical.
On to the pictures
Laying out the wool. I like to teach laying out 2 sides without wetting and then go back to do the wetting and wrapping. I don’t know that there is any great difference but I don’t like laying out wool on a wet resist of wet wool.
here they are wrapping one side of the wool around the resist. For those whose layouts grew a lot, we feather the wool towards the middle so it will be more even. You can see the second side waiting to be placed on top, wet down and then wrapped around.
Next, were the embellishments. This part is fun for them and me. I love to see how diverse the ideas are. I usually bring wool, handspun yarn, silk tops, throwsters waist, trilobal nylon, sari silk waist, silk hankies and locks for people to use. I seem to be missing one pot.
Then, of course, there is all the rubbing and rolling. This is the point where I usually gabb on about wool and felt, the eganomics of making felt and sheep….. and anything else that helps pass the time so there are fewer complaints about how long they have to rub or roll. It is a boring sort of thing to do, I usually listen to an audiobook.
We talked about different ways to cut open your felt to get different types of pots and how shaping can change them. one lady said she wanted a pot more like a fruit bowl shape. I suggested turning her pot into two bowls by cutting across the middle. She decided not to but it inspired 3 others to cut their pots at 1/8, 1/4 and 1/3 to get 2 pots as a set.
I am missing one there Not sure how that happened. Here are some pictures students sent me of the pots dry
10 thoughts on “Felt Vessel Workshop”
Great results Ann, and a good starting point for your students to progress from. It’s fun watching people’s disbelief turning into delight when they see their first results.
I get what you say about vessels usually turning out fine even if not as expected. I remember one of my sloppily made vessels having lots of ridges/flanges at the edge where I’d not taken enough care about wrapping the fibres, so I turned it inside out and and added lots of beads to the then internal ridges as if it was some sort of geode and entirely natural. So, like a cat falling off a fence, I said “I meant to do that”. And it sold too!
Ann
Thanks Ann. Once is a mistake 2 is a design feature. At least that’s what the weavers say. I think its a good motto to felt by. Great save on the vessel.
Your workshops are always fun and not borring (even the rubbing for hours part!!) looks like they had fun and such cool variations on a single resist!
Thanks Jan, good thing I am good at talking.
Looks like a great workshop Ann. Your students got a good variety of shapes from their circular resist. And the matching different sized pots are a great idea.
Thanks Ruth, It good for everyone to see how a simple shape can turn into many different things. It is a cool idea, isn’t it.
What a fun workshop and producing inspired vessels too. Gorgeous, and well done ladies.
Thanks Marie
Great result from your students Ann. They have achieved such a variety of shapes and sounds like they had fun with your stories and instructions.
When you say cutting at 1/8, 1/4 & 1/2….do you mean cutting out circles from the centre of the flat felted ‘disc’?
Have you tried cutting a slit in the edge of the ‘disc’ to remove the resist? I love doing this to create a very different upright vessel that is more oval when viewed from above. It also shows off all the applied decoration to maximum advantage.
Seeing this you’ve whet my appetite to make vessels again. Xx
They did really well. They were cutting across the circle. If you did it in half you would end up with 2 fruit bowl type bowls of the same size. I did it that way to using green inside and red out side and then after cutting the circle across the middle I turned one inside out to have two opposite coloured bowl to hold Christmas balls. 2 cut holes in the middle.