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Author: teriberry

Paddling our way into the “Deeply Felt” birthing pool

Paddling our way into the “Deeply Felt” birthing pool

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Sitting here, collapsed in an exhausted heap in front of my computer I find myself wondering if organising a group exhibition is a bit like giving birth? All the weeks of late nights, stress and anxiety are quickly forgotten the day the exhibition opens and 6 months later you’re thinking… “Shall we have another one?”

The Auckland Felters 2026 exhibition is now in the final stages of labour, and this time we have a midwife (curator) helping us with the delivery. Working with a curator (Matthew) and his installation team has been a new experience for me. In some ways it’s a relief, not worrying about which pieces look good together or figuring out how to hang some of the less conventional creations but the flip side is that we have little control over which pieces get selected and how they are presented. For a control freak, this is very unnerving! 🙂

A new piece for the exhibition

I have been working on a new piece for the exhibition and inviting the readers of my monthly emails to guess what it might be. There were some interesting responses but none were correct. Can you do any better? This is the first image I shared:

Thank you so much for all the poppies!

We have been blown away by the wonderful response to our call for help with making felted poppies. Clare Hocking had the wonderful idea of creating an ANZAC day commemorative installation to fundraise for the Returned Soldiers Association in New Zealand. We all thought her idea was especially touching given that our exhibition open day will be on 25th April (ANZAC Day). The response from felt-makers all around the world and the lovely stories and letters that accompanied many of the poppies has been heart-warming. Sarah and Clare have been hard at work, assembling the 285 poppies into an installation with some felted “barbed wire” made by Jaq Spirrett.

Sorting the poppies by size and colour – the purple ones are in remembrance of the animals who have served in our defence forces. Can you see your poppy(ies)?
Sarah and Clare starting hang the poppies on invisible threads.
Clare planning how the felted barbed wire will be entwined through the poppies.

What did you guess my exhibition piece might be?

This is the second photo from my newsletters, it’s not too late to change your guess… 😉

Unexpected Benefits from the Poppy Appeal

One of the groups who sent a batch of poppies was Les Hookeuses du Bor’de’lo, from Canada and one of their members, Janice Goguen, reached out to say she was planning to visit Auckland and could we recommend any fibre-related events / activities?

She was in luck (and as it turned out so were we 🙂 )! Auckland Fun Felters were meeting the weekend she would be visiting our fair city and she was warmly welcomed to spend the day with us. We had a wonderful time hosting Janice and she very generously shared her knowledge of Canadian rug hooking. A few of us are already germinating ideas of how to combine rug-hooking with felting… 🙂

Janice demonstrating the rug-hooking technique

The Big Reveal

I confess this piece still isn’t quite finished and I need to get a move on because we start hanging the exhibition a week on Tuesday but this is the last photo in the series….

I hope you can tell what it is now? 🙂 Were your earlier guesses correct?

This piece was made from LOTS of felt ropes and strips of commercial felt that I dyed in several batches because they wouldn’t all fit in my 30L tea urn. This was my first attempt to work in this way and I really was making it up as I went along, trying to create the form of the fish over the more structured woven background. This is definitely one of those pieces that I am enjoying more now that it is finished! 🙂

My next post will be about the exhibition and contain more information about the “In Remembrance” installation, stay tuned!  

Calling Felt-Makers Near and Far: Help Us Create an Inspiring Installation of Felted Poppies

Calling Felt-Makers Near and Far: Help Us Create an Inspiring Installation of Felted Poppies

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There are times when making with our hands feels especially meaningful. We would love it if you would like to join us in making this one of those times.

The Auckland Felters group is preparing an exhibition titled Deeply Felt, opening on 21 March and running through to 2 May at Nathan Homestead, Manurewa (Auckland), and we’re inviting felt-makers from around the world to help us create a collaborative installation of felted poppies. The exhibition will encompass ANZAC Day, making this shared work especially poignant. The poppy installation will be used to raise funds for the RSA (Returned Services Association).

Image by freepik

What is ANZAC Day?

ANZAC Day is commemorated each year on 25 April in New Zealand and Australia. It honours all those who have served and continue to serve in the armed forces, and remembers the lives lost through war and conflict. The day began as a remembrance of the ANZAC soldiers who landed at Gallipoli in 1915, and has since grown into a broader day of reflection, respect, and remembrance.

It is a quiet, reflective day — one that feels particularly fitting for an exhibition called Deeply Felt, where the act of making, remembering, and responding through fibre is central.

Why felted poppies?

The poppy is a powerful symbol of remembrance. Interpreted through felt — a material that embodies time, patience, and touch — each poppy becomes a small but heartfelt gesture. Individually they are modest but together they become something deeply moving.

Every contribution will be combined into a larger installation, creating an evocative expression of remembrance through hundreds of poppies, made by many hands.

Who can take part?

Anyone who loves working with fibre.
You don’t need to be a professional felt-maker — all abilities are all warmly welcomed. Each poppy will be unique, and that individuality is part of what will make the final piece so special.

What we’re looking for

  • Hand-felted poppies — wet felted, needle felted, nuno felted, or a combination (they do need to be felted please)
  • Poppies should be predominantly red and approxiately 10-15cm diameter

Please see our simple instructions and ideas for making felted poppies below to help guide you, but there’s plenty of room for personal expression.

How to take part

If you’d like to contribute, please:

  • Make one (or more!) felted poppies – the more the merrier!
  • They will need to be posted to Teri in New Zealand, to arrive by 10th February 2026

Because this is a volunteer-led, fundraising project, we are unfortunately not able to reimburse postage costs or return poppies. All contributions will become part of the installation, and any funds raised through the exhibition will go towards supporting the work of the RSA.

Do you know other feltmakers or belong to a crafting group? Please consider combining your poppies in one parcel to save on postage.

A shared act of making and remembering

This project is about connection — across borders, practices, and experiences — and about using our skills to contribute to something larger than ourselves. Each poppy is a small act of remembrance; together they will form a quiet but powerful presence within the Deeply Felt exhibition.

If you’d like to be involved, we would love to hear from you. Please contact Teri for details of where to send your poppies.

Auckland Felters thank you for considering adding your hands, your wool, and your care to this collaborative work.

How to make wet-felted poppies

If you prefer needle-felting, our resident needle-felter has prepared another set of instructions just for you! Please visit Sarah’s website here.

1 – Print this template on A4 or US Letter paper (tap on the printer icon), if you don’t have a printer a 20cm / 8″ diameter circle will also work.

poppy templateDownload

2 – Lay your template under a sheet or clear plastic or bubblewrap then lay your fibres from the centre out:

3 – Lay out your fibres until you have completed the circle:

4 – Layout your second layer in concentric rings starting from the outside, you probably will not need to add any fibre in the middle as the fibres are already overlapping here from the first layer:

5 – Optional step – you can add some accent colours to a couple of petals, this may be a different shade of red or you can “finger blend” another colour with your main colour.

To “finger blend” two colours, lay a tuft of each colour on top of the other. Pinch at both ends and pull your hands apart.

Lay the pulled tufts on top of each other and keep repeating until you reach your desired level of blending

6 – Lay your accent colour on one or two petals:

7 – Wet out (you might want to remove your template first):

8 – Add a black centre and dots for stamens. These can be cut from prefelt if you have some scraps or the dots can be made by rolling a tiny amount of wool in the palm of your hand:

9 – Push any wispy fibres around the edge towards the middle:

10 – Felt your flower to the prefelt stage using your preferred method; rubbing, rolling, “sanding”, kneading etc. When you do the pinch test the fibres should be holding together:

11 – Full the outer petals – pinch the centre of your flower from the back so the petals point downwards then roll the petals between your hands. This step tightens the felt on the outside of the circle so it starts to form a cup shape:

12 – Make 6 cuts leaving at least 5cm / 2″ of uncut felt at the centre, if you used an accent colour try to cut either side of those petals. This is a good time to trim any pointy bits of felt on your petals too:

13 – Continue fulling the felt by rubbing and kneading it, stopping to stretch and shape the individual petals every 30-60 seconds:

14 – While you are shaping the petals try to overlap them so each one sits a little behind its neighbour:

15 – Rinse and dry in a towel before the final reshape. I let mine dry in a cup or glass so they keep a tighter bud shape.

This is the amount of shrinkage you can expect:

Wishing you a fibre-filled creative 2026!

With thanks to Clare and Margaret from Auckland Felters for initiating this collaborative installation and creating the template.

 

Am I losing my marbles?

Am I losing my marbles?

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Do you feel like the days, weeks and months just keep getting away from you? No matter how hard you work, paddling faster and faster, the to-do list never gets any shorter? It has been 6 weeks since Felters Convergence, I was hoping for a quiet spell before the Christmas rush but it feels like it has been another insanely busy period. When I stop and think, “What have I done / achieved?” I’m at a loss…. I can’t remember!

Thank heavens for the camera roll in our mobile phones!

Early October saw my first ever pit firing with the Manurewa Potters, it was a lot of fun, with a shared lunch but, for me, the results were a little disappointing. I love colour and contrast and this style of firing produces more muted, subtle tones. It’s probably not a branch of pottery for me but I’m glad I got to try it.

These were my pots, the red / orange rings around the top were from underglazes I painted on before firing, the browns, greys and blacks were from the materials added to the fire. I have started waxing the one on the right, which has intensified some of the colours and it’s growing on me but the one on the left I think will be re-fired with some more traditional glazes.

In mid October I hosted my first Open Studio event in New Zealand, as part of the Franklin Arts Trail (which gets unflatteringly abbreviated to FAT). It was a huge success, I met so many fascinating people, introduced some of them to felt-making and even sold a few of my finished pieces, so now I have space to make more!

This photo was taken during the reorganising / scurryfunging, I’m sorry to say I forgot to take any photos during the event. Can you spot the ever-helpful cat (Aoife)?

A few felty friends and I had a play date just before Halloween where we made felted eyeballs using a variety of different techniques (felting around glass marbles, polystyrene balls and making solid wool balls).

Halloween weekend was spent with the lovely Waikato Creative Fibre group at a wonderful 3-day fibre retreat. I even managed to get some spinning done in between teaching a couple of short felting classes and taking a mosaic crochet class.

Fingers crossed I now have enough yarn to finish making a sleeveless top with a tulip hem:

Auckland is starting to feel much more summery and the weeds in my veg patch agree, they were definitely winning…

But after 6 days of hard graft and 1 broken garden fork later I was delighted to find half a dozen leeks, some potatoes and a couple of onions ready to harvest and I no longer cringe at the state of this part of the garden:

I contacted Spear and Jackson about the fork because it had a “10 year warranty” sticker not really holding out much hope that they would replace it but amazingly the replacement has just arrived, all the way from the UK, less than 2 weeks after I emailed them! Now that’s good service 🙂

A few months ago Auckland Felters applied to hold a group exhibition at Nathan Homestead, an historic building that has just completed a year-long renovation, and we were successful – YAY!

The exhibition doesn’t open until next March but deadline for the marketing materials was last week so there has been a lot of frantic activity as we formulated a plan for a felting workshop and market day. The date of our workshop falls on 25th April, ANZAC day (the antipodean equivalent of Remembrance day) so we thought a field of felted poppies would be a fitting project.

With only a few hours before the deadline I found myself hastily felting a sample for the brochure. The result is ok but not my best work. If I can find a spare 30 min I would like to fix the central flower with some needle-felting and add some more highlights and shading.

My local craft / gift shop, Clevedon Creatives + Co, have started stocking some of my work so there has been quite of lot of trips back and forth to get it set up. Now my studio looks even more empty than it did after FAT but I am pleased to have a wider audience for my work.

The Christmas season has already started here with my first artisan craft fair last weekend. This market, at the Franklin Arts Centre in Pukekohe, was a very successful start to the season, fingers crossed this is a good omen for the next few weeks after 2025 started with a bit of an economic whimper.

The felted soaps are eternally popular at my local craft markets so I have been furiously making these most evenings for the last few weeks:

There has been quite a lot of dyeing going on too, mostly silk hankies and silk top as I try to keep up with demand. These plaits will be added to my Etsy shop over the next few days.

Finally a bit of felting fun, a new journal cover. When I started laying out the wool for this I was planning to cover it with yarn in a grid pattern but just as I was about to start laying out the yarns it screamed, “WATER!”. So I rummaged in my bag of prefelt scraps and found some space-dyed orange and yellow pieces. Perfect for fish! A couple of white silk hankies to emulate splashing water / surf et voila!

I’m so glad I ditched the yarn, the jumping, playful fish are much more fun! I can’t help but smile when I see them 🙂

Phew! No wonder the last few weeks have felt busy 🙂 Why couldn’t I remember any of that without my phone…?

Felt Connect 2025

Felt Connect 2025

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As I write, nearly a week has passed since the 18th Southern Hemisphere Felters’ Convergence drew to a close but that peculiar mix of exhaustion, elation and excitement I felt as I drove home still lingers. I’m buzzing with so many ideas and happy memories! 🙂

The Felters Convergence is usually (pandemics permitting) a biennial event organised by volunteers from Australia or New Zealand. It is an opportunity for antipodean felt-makers to gather and share their knowledge and ideas. This year it was held in the beautifully quaint and historic suburb of Parnell in Auckland, New Zealand.

Before we arrived we were invited to “bring your smile”, a common refrain for anyone attending a social event but this time there was a twist…. We were to arrive with a smile and leave with a smile…. a felted smile! 🙂

Christine Roxburgh and Jenny Forrester (our very talented and incredibly hard-working organisers) put together an amazing, fun-packed program over the 4 days we had together. At almost any given moment there were 3 to 4 different classes or talks taking place and if that wasn’t enough, there was a room full of traders selling all manner of fibres, fabrics and felting equipment and a fabulous felt exhibition to visit. They REALLY crammed a lot in to the 4 days!

A small selection of pieces in the exhibition:

As Christine explained at the opening dinner, the Felt Connect title was a nod to the underlying philosophy of Convergence where feltmakers from far and wide come together to not only share their knowledge and love of fibre arts but also where new connections and international friendships form.

We had just shy of 100 attendees, 30 of whom were visiting from Australia and one came all the way from the US! Our headline tutors were equally international with Nancy Ballesteros from Western Australia, Katia Mokeyeva from Vermont in the US and Jacqui Collins from New Zealand.

Nancy taught for 3 very full days, covering topics such as:

  • colour theory for fibre artists
  • making properly fulled but beautifully drape-able felt in the Art of Drape class
  • the saucily titled, “Hanky Panky” session where she suggested lots of different ways to incorporate silk hankies into your felt
  • the Natural Rhythms class where she shared how she uses Fibonacci’s design principles in conjunction with her colour theory lecture from day 1. This allowed us the perfect opportunity to put some of what we had learned from her colour theory talk into practice while exploring wet-wool layout techniques.

Our sessions with Katia were a technological leap forward for Convergence, having someone teach 100 felt-makers from a different continent was novel and gave us the chance to learn from an expert that most of us will never have the opportunity to meet in person.

An example of Katia’s “Sea Waves” technique from her website

Katia provided us with pre-recorded videos of her signature “Sea Waves” technique and answered our questions over a Zoom call. Jenny did an amazing job of bringing it all together and resolving the inevitable technical issues that required her to hold the speaker jack in the computer so the room full of keen students could hear Katia’s replies to their questions from half a world away.

After our online session with Katia we were set free to experiment with our new learnings in the main hall.

Jacqui provided 4 full days of teaching, her classes were so popular many of them were over-subscribed. She covered a wide range of topics including, how to:

  • felt a fedora style hat using alpaca fibre,
  • make a wet-felted necklace,
  • painting on silk
  • construct and hang 3D wall art

And of course then there was the army of more than 20 volunteer tutors who offered to share their knowledge, a technique or ideas on how to develop your own style in new directions. There really was something for everyone!

A raffle was held to raise seed money for Convergence 2027 and the prizes were drawn on the final day:

Photographer – Pip Sturgeon

The final gala dinner and fashion show was a hoot, with heartfelt closing speeches from Jenny and Christine followed by the very funny “Glitter Sisters” AKA Lynn Evans and Sharon Fergusson, who hosted the felt fashion show with more than 20 stunning creations paraded among the enthralled diners.

L to R: Lynn Evans, Jenny Forrester, Sharon Fergusson and Christine Roxburgh. Photographer – Flo de Ruiter
Just a few of the fabulous felted outfits on display in the fashion parade. Photographer – Margaret Joppa
Bernice Mitchell modelling one of the three outfits she presented during the parade. Photographer – Margaret Joppa

Attending a Felters Convergence has been on my bucket list since I first read about the 2015 event and 10 years later, I’m pleased to say, Felt Connect 2025 massively exceeded my very high expectations and was worth the 10 year wait! Now I am hooked and Adelaide 2027 can’t come around soon enough! 🙂

Thank you so much to everyone who attended, organised and / or volunteered at this event, you are all utterly marvellous!

Soap, Chooks and Distant Memories of Summer

Soap, Chooks and Distant Memories of Summer

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It’s funny how the time flies isn’t it? I feel like I have been crazy busy for months but when I stop and think what I have to show for it, I’m stumped! I have been working on a piece for the IFA magazine, Felt Matters which has taken a fair chunk of my time. Fingers crossed, that piece will appear in the September issue but I can’t say too much about that before it is published….

There have been quite a few markets and spin-ins this month, which have been fun but not all that profitable, fingers crossed I do better at the next two, a pottery market in South Auckland and then Fibretron, one of the biggest fibre events in New Zealand….

I sold a few felted soaps at the Nathan Homestead market:

So I have been replacing some of that stock, first I needed to work out which soaps needed replacing:

Then to work…

A few of the finished soaps ready for the next market….

Not fibre related but we have two new chooks, a friend adopted a new dog and was struggling to manage so I agreed to add her two ladies (Thelma and Louise) to our flock of nine naughty chooks. I had hoped to keep them in a separate run and coop (alcatraz henitentiary) where they could all see each other for at least a couple of weeks. However, 3 of my girls decided the mountain of food in their troughs wasn’t enough, they wanted what the new girls were eating and broke into alcatraz. So I had to play prison guard and break up the fights, turns out one of my Red Shavers is a horrible bully, she’s been threatened with the pot a few times.

Thelma and Louise in the henitentiary

Thelma and Louise are still sleeping and laying in the henitentiary but are allowed to free range during the day. For the most part they are hanging out away from my original flock but every now and then I have to break up the squabbles and chase the naughty bully away.

In between chook chasing I have started work on a crochet shawl using some hand-spun art yarn, can you see the shells and glass beads? It was spun form some of the pina colada blend I have for sale, it contains pineapple fibre and reminds me of summers on the beach. A distant memory in the depths of a New Zealand winter!

Introducing…. Sarah Ritchie

Introducing…. Sarah Ritchie

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If you are a felt-maker in New Zealand, you probably recognise Sarah’s name and her distinctive style from Creative Fibre circles. Her jaw-droppingly beautiful, cubist-style, needle-felted artworks have appeared on the front cover of magazines and in many exhibitions. We have felt (excuse the pun 😉 ) very fortunate to learn from Sarah and watch her work, and now you can too… Sarah is about to publish her first needle-felting book! It is packed full of tips, lots of “how to” information as well as 10 patterns and designs for you to follow and adapt to your own personal style and colour palette.

There is something for everyone, from curious beginners to experienced felters looking for a fresh creative direction.

This book is the result of Sarah’s own journey as a self-taught artist. After years of experimenting with wool, colour and composition, she developed a painterly style and soon discovered how eager others were to learn her techniques. Writing this book was a natural progression from offering kits and teaching in person, providing a way to share what she’s learned in a practical and approachable format.

Front cover of Needle-felting with Sarah Ritchie: Fibre painting pattern collection 1

Where can I buy a copy?

If you are coming to Woolfest in Auckland on 24th May 2025, you can pick up your hard copy and chat with Sarah in person. Alternatively, if Auckland is just a little too far to travel, you can download the e-book from Sarah’s website (www.sarah-ritchie.com) or purchase a hard copy from Amazon.

What makes ‘Needle-felting with Sarah Ritchie’ stand out is the combination of technical guidance and artistic encouragement. Rather than simply replicating each piece, readers are invited to adapt, explore, and make each artwork their own. It’s a book that doesn’t just teach a craft — it nurtures creative confidence.

I hope you enjoy it!

What Would You Have Done?

What Would You Have Done?

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I have a confession to make…. Actually 2 confessions, if I am totally honest….

The spinners among you will know all too well that spinning wheels are a lot like sheep, if you don’t get the tension just right they can be a little skittish, they need feeding (with fibre) and of course they are always happiest when gathered in a flock. 🙂 I suspect you already see where this post is headed….

My first, beloved wheel is an Ashford Traditional fitted with a jumbo flyer. She is a lovely wheel. I have spent many happy hours learning to spin and making some (prize-winning) art yarns on her but I have been hankering for a e-spinner almost since the first time I plied 2 singles together.

Mr TB likes a good engineering challenge, so he offered to design and 3-D print an e-spinner for me. Three years later we are surrounded by various iterations of e-spinner parts but nothing that could function as an e-spinner.

Sexy eh?

In January a friend posted on FB that she had signed up to the Electric Eel Wheel Kickstarter for his newest e-spinner, the Fold. As the name suggests it is a decent size but folds down to make it much more convenient to travel with. I had to have one! So I signed up but soon realised I would have to wait until March 2026 for it to be shipped! Oh well, I’ve already waited 3 years for my first e-spinner, what’s another year? So I resigned myself to having an only child (wheel) for another year.

Phew! that’s confession #1 revealed, that wasn’t so hard but Mr TB was rather disappointed that I had given up on him producing an e-spinner.

Earlier this month was the annual Pukekohe Spin-in, I was trading at the event, and overheard a conversation about an e-spinner on the pre-loved equipment stand. The other traders were still setting up their stands and the doors weren’t due to open for another 30 min. I was just going to have a look, there’s no harm in looking right?

Ten minutes later I was happily putting the e-spinner through her paces in the hall kitchen, I was in love! I knew I was breaking the first rule of selling at craft fairs – “don’t spend more than you’ve earned”, but I didn’t care, she was coming home with me! 🙂

Next, to “sneak” my new purchase into the house….

Mr TB just rolled his eyes at me.

The first few evenings I had her sitting on the coffee table but it was a little too far away for comfort, so I started looking for a height adjustable trolley and came across various tables that are probably meant for people who are bed-bound. I ordered one and braced myself for the inevitable barrage of jokes from Mr TB, but as yet he’s not made any comment. I suspect he doesn’t realise what the table is…

It’s perfect for spinning with my feet up on the Lazy-boy in front if the TV and the castors make it a doddle to wheel out of the way when not in use.

I’ve only had the spinner for a few days but this was the first skein she has produced for me:

I am delighted with my purchase, she wasn’t cheap but e-spinners seem to keep their value on the second-hand market here. I will probably sell my Ashford e-spinner once the EEW Fold arrives. Mr TB thinks I’m crazy buying 2 e-spinners just a few weeks apart, do you think I made the right call?

Surgical Interventions on a Nudibranch

Surgical Interventions on a Nudibranch

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It’s hard to believe but I started making this felted mailbox cover nearly 2 years ago. This is what it looked like in March 2023 before I started adding the gills and rhinophores (horns at the front) were added.

I took it to the Fun Felters retreat that March where we collectively stretched it over the commercial mailbox (I had fulled it too far so it took a LOT of pulling and stretching to get onto the box). It took 5 of us, all pulling on a different section to get it all the way on.

Sadly I was too busy fighting the damp nudi to take any photos but I am sure we must have looked sight 🙂

After working and shaping it I wasn’t happy with the rhinophores so I wrapped some garden wire around them and then Mr TB pointed out that they looked a lot like the red flag. Urgh, I hated to admit it but he was right, even with them pointed down they could still be mistaken for a flag by a short-sighted postie 🙁

Nudibranch mail box pre-surgery

I already knew some surgery would be needed to make the flag accessible (it was trapped under the felt) so the rhinophores were amputated at the same time – ouch!

After the rhinophores were carefully removed (leaving nasty purple wounds) an incision was made over the flag. I love how you can clearly see the layers of wool and fabric across the cut edge.

The flag was extracted and the wound closed with sutures…

Before massaging to heal the wound and minimise scarring.

Here she is, fully recovered and drying in the Auckland sunshine 🙂 Waiting for a new post to be installed that she can perch on.

No animals, not even humans, were harmed in the making of this mail box 🙂

Taking Inspiration

Taking Inspiration

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Where do the ideas for your felt projects come from? I find inspiration in a whole range of sources, sometimes it’s photos of flora or fauna I’ve taken on holiday or just stumbled across on the web, sometimes it is scrappy little samples from playing in the studio that spark an idea for a bigger project and sometimes it’s other artists’ work.

Potters are a favourite source for this last group, as a part-time potter myself I am probably exposed to other potters work more than most and I love the technical challenge of thinking how my favourite shapes and forms made in clay can be translated into a completely different medium like wet felt.

My interest was piqued by a post in the Sculptural Wet Felting group on Facebook (if you aren’t a member I recommend joining, there are some very clever people doing amazing things with felt in there!). The post introduced Ursula Morley Price’s incredible ceramic artworks, her name is definitely worth Googling and her incredible work appears to be for sale in galleries all over the world.

The post on FB set us a challenge, to interpret Ursula’s work in wet felt…. Challenge accepted!

Labour weekend was the second of our annual Auckland Fun Felter’s retreats, my (probably overly-ambitious) plans to make a 2 storey cat cave and a felted origami footstool were pushed aside so I could play with felted “fins” instead.

I confess, I had made similar pieces in felt before, these I called my “flappy vessels”. Most have been sold or gifted but I still have these two, my “helter-skelter vessel”:

and a hanging light:

But seeing Ursula’s work inspired me to go all-out adding fins to my “vessels”.

The first attempt was a hat, using my current favourite “Dragon’s Breath” merino and silk blend:

It reminds me of an erupting volcano, it doesn’t have a name yet but my thoughts are headed in that direction. Any ideas for a name?

I was pleased with how the hat turned out so set myself an extra challenge of making a vessel that could stand aloft on its fins, I think this one will be called “levitate”:

I am tempted to trim some more of the base fins so it is left standing on just a handful and make it appear more like it is floating.

Are you feeling inspired? I’d love to see what you create!

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

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One of my best customers for my 3D-printed felting tools, a fellow felt teacher in the US, asked if I could make a smaller version of the wand tool for making jewellery. I had previously investigated making the wand longer and narrower towards the tip but the tips kept breaking, I don’t make a lot of jewellery or small items so the idea was abandoned.

I mentioned the request to Mr TB who suggested a couple of possible solutions for the fragile tips. He printed 2 of them for me and I have been testing them this week. I may be biased but think they are pretty good, I have been using them quite aggressively and they are still in tact and working as I had hoped.

For the tests I decided to make set of felted rings. Normally I use a bundle of pencils held together with an elastic band but this maker pen with a tapered barrel came to hand first. Pencils / pens are ideal because you can alter the size of your ring by adding more pencils to the bundle, then remove them one by one as the felt fulls and the ring shrinks down.

Wrapping wool around the pen before adding soapy water and gently rubbing
Once the felt was starting to shrink I transferred the ring to the tool and fulled the inside of the ring
This is how much the ring shrank, the inside of the ring was wide enough to stretch around the widest part of the pen at the start
Looking for more pens to make a larger ring I came across this beaker instead…

I made a small felted ball to finish the set and make a pendant, which layout do you like best?

The fulling tool just needs a couple of minor tweaks and a name (any ideas?), another round of testing and it will be ready to join the others.

Apologies for the poor quality of these photos, they were taken in my current studio (the garage) and the light in there is awful. The new studio is coming along well though. Another month and the floor will be tiled, the kitchenette and shelving installed and all my fluff moved from the garage to its new home 🙂

The rest of the reno is progressing too, our new kitchen is half installed, the bathrooms and deck are nearly finished and this week the builders are putting in a retaining wall.

The house and garden 2 years ago
The house and garden this week – spot the difference?
The studio with new deck

In between painting and moving garden plants I have not had much time for felting so have been getting my “fix” through teaching…

A private, beginners bag class…

These ladies know how to felt in style – home made G&Ts! 🙂

Mosaic felting at the Auckland Creative Fibre retreat…

I also had the pleasure of teaching a felted pod class in collaboration with Deaf Aotearoa last month but I’m afraid I forgot to take any photos. This was a wonderful experience and I have no hesitation in recommending teaching this way if you get the opportunity, most of the participants could lip read but we also had a sign language interpreter with us. The hardest part for me, was trying not to talk while demonstrating, I am so used to explaining what I am doing with my hands I had to keep checking myself to explain first, so everyone could watch the interpreter and then demonstrate with the wool.

I’d better get back to painting…. happy felting!