I know that some of our readers are members of the International Feltmakers Association and therefore know all about our upcoming exhibition “Connections”. For those of you who don’t, the Feltmakers organisation uses their AGM at the end of March as the launch for a themed annual online exhibition to showcase our members work. The wonderful thing about these events is that they are not juried, there is no right or wrong so no one is judged, it’s open to any ability and how you interpret each theme is entirely up to you. All of the online exhibitions can be viewed by anyone, not just members, simply visit Feltmakers.com and click on Our Feltmakers from the menu and then choose Online Exhibitions. Last year’s theme was Hats Off! Hats and fascinators are simply sculptures for the head so we could let our imaginations run riot and you can see the wide variety of headwear created for that event here.

For me this year’s brief took more thought as there are so many different ways it could be approached…..”you can find connections in the way you interact with other feltmakers, in the way you are inspired by nature, other mediums or other artists. You can also explore the literal: how can I connect one part of the felt to another?”

I finally whittled my thoughts down to two ideas. The first would take the form of another head piece, because I’m developing a bit of a thing for fascinators, and the second would be a 3D vessel.

I am a huge fan of the Dutch Feltmaker and Milliner Saar Snoek. Saar has a different approach to many other feltmakers I know and her imagination and creativity when it comes to felted headwear is phenomenal!

How I approached my Fascinator might sound like a cop out to some of you but remember the theme of the exhibition is Connections🤩 So rather than start from scratch I decided to “connect” three existing pieces of my own to create a Fascinator, these are pieces that were never intended to be worn on the head. One of these was originally designed as necklace which I’ve worn on several occasions along with the second piece which was a matching bracelet. They were both Nuno felted, stitched, embellished with beads and backed with fabric.

Next I looked around for something suitable to top off my head piece. I’d been working with organza earlier that day so auditioned a piece of that but decided against it. It needed something with much more impact!

I’d previously made a blue version of the Splash, inspired by the wonderful Australian feltmaker Pam de Groot, and thought I’d try that out for size. Although it was far too floppy at this stage I could envisage it working as the third piece of the Fascinator. I used acrylic paint to colour it to complement the other two pieces and to give it enough rigidity to keep its shape.

Next I removed the necklace chain and invisibly stitched everything together.The final stage was to attach it to a gold metal headband repurposed from another project and then talk a friend into modelling it for me. Fortunately Maria was all for it and I think she really suits it too!

For my second piece I started by sketching a variety of shapes including cords, spikes and balls which could be used to join individual pieces of flat felt in a decorative way. While I was considering how this would look my design changed several times and ended up becoming a four sided hinged structure. At this point I realised it would be a good project for Waltham Windmills next challenge which is Structures. So having only made four connectors I decided to park that design for now and moved on to plan B.

Plan B was based on a very rough sketch but became more of a “let’s make a start and see where it goes” sort of plan to avoid any more procrastination!!

I started with an egg shaped resist, covered it in green and grey Merino fibre and worked it to prefelt. Various thicknesses of hand made prefelt and fully felted offcuts were then arranged on one side and covered with a thin layer of white Corriedale fibre. At that point I decided to add the grey concertina protrusion before attaching the ropes, balls, cords and several other pieces of prefelt on the top side. In all I connected at least 60 separate pieces of felt as well as small pebbles, acrylic wallpaper and dried seaweed. It’s very tactile and I’ve left it hollow so it can be pushed and pulled and reshaped allowing the viewer to also connect with it.

I hope you’ll take the time to visit the Feltmakers website after the 29th March and see the exhibition for yourself.