A couple of weeks ago, I did a class at Pinheys Point Historical Site. It is a beautiful site.
Rob Huntley image for Visit Pinhey’s Point web page.
We set up in what was the ballroom. The room is about the same size as my living and dining room. Not what I think of as a ballroom, but I guess there was enough room even with the big dresses. If you’re not dancing, you have to stand in another room.
They had lots of fun picking wool colours and silk. They were a great group; they listened carefully and asked good questions.
I love how they are all so different.
Here are a couple of group shots in front of the window. I shows you better how they will look with light in them. They will all lighten as they dry, too.
I always enjoy this class; it’s only half a day, but it gives such great results.
Don’t forget: registration for the expanded 3D resist (book resist) class is open. Class starts September 26, 2026
Registration for the expanded 3D resist, aka a book resist, opens today, September 5, 2026. The class runs from September 26 to Oct 31 2026. Cost: $75 Canadian, approx. $54 US, $46 Euro, $39 Pounds, $75 Aus, $90 NZ.
This is now a two part course. The first part will show you how to make, assemble and use a 3d book resist. It will guide you step by step from building the multi-part resist to the finished piece and give you the skills to continue on to more fun with sculptures.
The second part of this course will be on design and testing. This will save you fibre, time, and frustration when things don’t go the way you thought they would. It will show you how to test different shapes and cutting methods without making multiple felt samples. You will be able to assemble and test the concept, testing multiple assembly and cutting techniques. Then you will be able to move on to making a felt piece with confidence.
The Ottawa Valley Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild has an annual Sale and Exhibition. Every year there is a theme for the Exhibition. This year and the next two years. we are doing a section of the colour wheel. This year we are doing the blue section. We are taking it to the secondary colour on each side to give people the most scope to work with.
Wendy, the Coordinator of the Exhibition, also asked people to let her know if the piece was done in a class or was a class we teach. So, I made a blue bird feeder. It is a fun class. It is always more fun if it doesn’t have to fit anyone at the end.
I like to do a gourd shape, and with the blue theme, I used 4 shades of blue.
Then I picked out some of my blue handspun that has some sparkle in it. I created an all over random design that wrapped around onto the other side.
Then fixed the front so I could cut the hole without cutting the design.
You can see some of the yarn above the hole shifted while I was rolling. Impatience getting the better of me again. I may try to shift them a little with a felting needle.
these to great outside. My mother-in-law’s feeder was hanging outside for 3 years before the rope hanger broke. It was purple with orange locks. After 3 years, it was bluish grey from the sun. The chickadees in particular liked it.
I’m afraid that the series of heatwaves we’ve been (and still are) experiencing have had much the same effect on me as the Covid Lock Downs. I have pretty much lost my mojo again though not quite in the same way. Every time the weather cools down a bit I have managed to think about and sometimes even start a project, only for it to be abandoned as soon as the next heatwave starts. I now cannot see my work table for various piles of project “stuff” in various stages of progress.
Also I haven’t managed to do much about preparing for this post, so I’ve once again picked some topics from my list of things to write about which are in fact mainly “historic”.
Many moons ago back, in the 70s, when macramé was first in vogue and long before I became interested in spinning let alone before I found felting, I was obsessed with string and knots.
Amongst the patterns I came across was one for a lampshade. Do any of you remember the Marshall Cavendish series of monthly craft magazines “Golden Hands” covering several different crafts, which could be collected into 4 (I think – possibly 6) annual volumes? I loved them and made lots of things from their patterns.
I did think that I found the macramé pattern I had followed for the lampshade in one of the Golden Hands Magazines, but Mr Google has been unable to find it, so it may have been in some other magazine – possibly “Women”, “Women’s Own” or “Women’s Realm” (that was in the days before they started emulating “Hello Magazine” and the like🤢).
As it was so long ago that I made the lampshade I can only show you what it looks like now. It was made from dishcloth cotton and made directly on a lampshade frame. I lined the shade with red satin type fabric and gave it to my mother for one of her birthdays.
Macramé lampshade 1
Macramé lampshade 2
Macramé lampshade3
Macramé lampshade 4
During my “macramé period” I started to make small free standing sculptures using just clove hitches, rather than mixing knots like flat or square knots. Then my niece became pregnant with her first child so I thought I’d have a go at making a macramé rattle for the baby. As it would need to be washable, I chose to use nylon curtain/blind cord and one of the indoor balls (the plastic lightweight sort with lots of holes in) with a couple of brass bells inside for the inner body. I did not have a pattern to follow (by then I preferred to make my own designs rather than copy someone else’s).
By changing the direction of some of the clove hitches I was able to give the rattle a face. Here is the only picture I have of the rattle, which my husband took for me before I sent it off to my niece.
Unacknowledged macramé rattle
My niece had another child a few years later, but I’m afraid that, as I have had no confirmation of receipt of the rattle (even now, although I know it was received) let alone any thanks, I stopped sending even cards to her!
Around the same time as I made these pieces, I made a crochet cotton macramé Dorothy bag, using a stuffed oval ball shaped thingy as the base to work on. I added pearl beads and lined the bag with pink fabric and used it as a sample for a wedding accessory (back in the days when a couple of friends and I were making crocheted wedding “favours” and sold quite a lot of them – that must have been getting on for 50 years ago), but I wasn’t asked to make another one and I didn’t sell the original. I still have it somewhere.
Dorothy Bag – big enough for a bride’s handkerchief
Back in 2012 I was doing bits of tapestry weaving and to be honest I was getting bored with it – it was taking too long and I wanted to get on to something more interesting. I had decided to weave the word “Exchange” but I can’t remember why now. It may be because I liked the monogram EX that I was using. The “e” was in black and the “x” was in bright red. The background was to be a strong green. The rest of the word was to be in black, but in outline only. I managed to complete the monogram before I decided to do something different, which was to felt the rest. I felted green merino fibres over both sides of the cotton warps with the work still on the loom. This made the “fabric” quite tough so that it kept its shape. I then needle felted the “change” in lower case. I did actually exhibit it at The Exchange when we had one of our several exhibitions in their Café/Gallery. The bear with the felted tapestry in the featured image was made by a friend, who makes bears for adults, and bought for my birthday by my husband.
My felted tapestry woven Exchange
I did think that I might get some people commenting on the coincidence with The Exchange’s name but no-one seemed to notice, or couldn’t be bothered!
Back in early 2022 I told you about a couple of door stops which I had made, one of which was named Yoda by my husband.
During the making of Yoda I made what I now know to have been a construction error. Because I was concerned that if he had been picked up by his head it might come off, I placed a strong loop made from the hem of a towel behind his head to be used as a handle. This resulted in him becoming very tatty around the head. Every time he was picked up by the handle it rubbed the back of his head and his ears and the fibres began to come away. In addition his head was beginning to get droopy, as you can see from the way he is peering around the bathroom door.
Peeping Yoda looking the worse for wear
Thus he needed what my late brother in law used to call a “Warranty Job” (he used to make all sorts of parts for traction and railway engines for others as well as himself and now and then someone would ask him if he could effect some repairs).
As is my wont it was some time before I finally got round to doing Yoda’s warranty job.
I hadn’t been happy with the shape of his head, it was a bit flat at the back. For this reason as well as his tatty appearance I removed his head as well as the handle. I moved the handle to the middle of his back so that it would balance him when he was picked up and it didn’t rub against any part of his head or body.
Next I moved on to his head. I didn’t have any more fibres of the right colour to match his body so had to blend some to match. Then I started to cut away the rubbed fibres from his head and add more of the new. I rounded out the back of his head a bit more and thickened up his ears. I still had some of the correct pinky-grey fibres which I had used for his face so I tidied up his face too.
Tatty Yoda 1
Tatty Yoda from the back. See the fibres pulling off and the handle in the wrong place?
Blending the reds to get the right shade
Warranty job in progress – moving the handle
Warranty job – just about to start on the head
Warranty job in progress – a new face
I decided to add yellow slightly opened eyes just to show that he was really awake. This is him now.
Finished Warranty Job – Yoda back at his post
That’s the lot for this post, hopefully by the time my next one is due I will have got my mojo back again and have something new to show you. In the mean time here’s a real smiley cat. I do wonder what’s going through his mind – any ideas?
This is my Boy (originally named Radius by his previous owners). He really is a smiley cat.
Last time you saw the bag I was making, as a sample for this class. The class was at https://www.forestcovefarm.ca/. It was lovely. It was outside, and it was quite hot, but not as hot as the next week. There were a couple of pop-up tents and lots of trees for shade. There is also their store that is air-conditioned, so we could cool down if needed.
Most of the pictures are quite blurry. I am having trouble with my camera not focusing. Near the end of the day, I did find out that if I zoomed out to .9 it would focus, so the final shots are better. I have been to the Apple store, and they are ordering me a new camera.
It was a great group, with a wide range in ages from late teens to retired.
Adding the colour to the ropes took longer than expected, but I was glad I made the cores for them.
Corinne sent me a few pictures of the day, so here I am teaching.
Here are the blurry shots of everyone’s bags before felting.
I seem to have missed one. There should be 8.
Last night Corinne from Forest Cove sent me a few pictures. She had a shot of the bag I missed.
After much rubbing and rolling and them all thinking nothing was happening, I had them check the bags against the resists, and they were very surprised at how much they had shrunk. This gave some more energy, and they were able to finish the fulling. I only managed 3 pictures of the finished bag. Everyone was in a hurry to pop into the store and get cool and do some shopping.
The grey and purple one was much better in person. And I suspect that the purple will show much more when it is dry. I am hoping some people will send me pictures of thier dry and finished bags. They had to add the handles after they were dry. I did get one, but my email seems to have eaten it. I sent them home with instructions on blocking them and drying them and some tips on blocking them more with a steam iron if they want to.
Everyone seemed happy, so I am happy. I think I will switch to a bag with a slit handle next time, as the rope handle took longer than expected. By my next blog post, I should have a new camera in my phone. Hopefully that means I will take better pictures.
I’ve been reviewing the future direction of my felt work. I’ve decided to stop having so many exhibitions and sales. I will still do some exhibitions but I’d like to focus less on what people might buy and more on the things I’d like to make, irrespective of whether or not they are saleable.
In particular, I’d like to do more complex 3D & sculptural work as I particularly enjoy it. So it was a happy coincidence that Gladys Paulus was offering an online felt sculpture course called SHAPESHIFT.
My very first blog on this site was about a 3D seed pods workshop I took with Gladys Paulus in November 2019. Herfe’s a link if you want to take a look.
I really admire her work and found her an excellent tutor so it was a bit of a no-brainer: I signed up for SHAPESHIFT with a glad heart.
You can find a full description of SHAPESHIFT through the link below. Essentially it is about developing your eye and aptitude for sculptural felting rather than producing a specific ‘thing’. Working from a 25cm flat circular resist, Gladys takes you through play, intuition and discovery, building confidence and a developing a sculptor’s eye.
The course materials are clear and thorough with extensive text and video descriptions. Gladys also gave generous, thoughtful, insightful and encouraging personal feedback, which was invaluable.
So, let me introduce my 10 sculptures.
The materials list suggested working with light coloured wool batts. The only light batts I have in a large quantity are Corriedale (25-29 mic) and Merino (23 mic) both from World of Wool. I started with the Corriedale, which is quite a bright white colour. All the sculptures start off with the same flat circular resist.
1) SEEDHEAD
This was my first sculpture. It’s quite a complicated shape and took me a long time but I was happy with the result. I could do with de-hairing it (I tried a heat gun but didn’t really get on with it).
2) CONTORTION
I lost sight of the overall shape of this one and had to go back and felt it some more. Isn’t felt a wonderful material that it lets you do that! It’s my least favourite shape but I learned a lot from it, which really is the point.
3) WRAP
I called this ‘wrap’ as it feels a bit like a hug. It’s less complicated than the previous two. Although it’s not obvious from these photos, it also tips slightly which gives it a slightly fragile feel.
4) SLIPSTREAM
With ‘Slipstream’ I was specifically working on getting smooth transitions between different planes: some nice sharp edges.
5) RINGS
I may go back and re-work ‘Rings’ to exaggerate the fact that the rings aren’t parallel. At the moment it feels a bit ‘meh’, although I do like the way you can see the light though the hole.
I thought my sculptures so far were tending to look like vessels. I’ve made a lot of vessels in my time so I decided to try to move away from those shapes. At this point I also switched from using the Corriedale to the Merino batt. It’s a more cream colour, felts slightly more quickly and gives a lovely smooth finish.
6) LEAVES
With ‘Leaves’ I worked on making more concave shapes. I particularly like that it looks completely different from the top (picture 2) than from the sides.
7) PLANES
More work on refining planes and angles
8) LEAF OR SHELL?
Similar to ‘Leaves’ in that I used some of the same shapes and didn’t want the sculpture to look like a vessel. I also like this one as it looks very different from different angles
9) UPTIGHT
I think with ‘Uptight’ I pushed the limit of how many different ribs and planes I could get across the shape. It was a bit of a tussle to get it as I wanted it, though I’m happy with the result. For a long time it was a horizontal sculpture but near the end it became upright, which contributed to its name.
10) TILT
I knew ‘Tilt’ would be my last sculpture for the course and tried to go with something a little more relaxed. I like that it seems to be balancing. I thought I might make a shape like three pebbles balancing on top of each other but decided they would be too small – I may make something like this using a long oval resist.
It was good to see other participants’ sculptures – they were all so different. For me it really illustrated the enormous flexibility of the medium, and how much the shaping is entirely in our hands
I absolutely loved this course. I learned some new techniques, which I will continue to use, but most of all I reveled in taking time, letting things develop slowly, experimenting and learning as I went along. I have a bit of a felting gap now due to other commitments but I am already thinking about what sculptures to make next.
I’ve always enjoyed wet felting, but this course really re-awakened my excitement in making felt. I woke up in the morning thinking about felting and couldn’t wait to create my next sculpture. That was joyful and a great gift. Gladys is working on a more advanced sculpting course called RESIST! Will I be signing up? What do you think?!
This last week, I have been preparing for a bag class I am teaching. This is a beginner class, so they will be making rope handles. The ropes will then go through holes in the bag and be tied with a knot. This is a nice style and fairly easy, so they can concentrate on the bag part.
Please excuse the pictures; I adjusted them as best I could. The light bounce from the fluorescent lights on the white wool and the plastic was terrible.
I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the ropes. To that end, I have been making snakes to act as the inside of thier ropes. I use a pretty standard layout, a row of wool singled across and then a line of wool at 90 degrees at the near side to roll around.
I roll it up dry and work it dry for a while to shrink it before adding water. If I go slow and gentle, I can get a nice, smooth snake. In this case, I am not being that careful because they will all get a final layer of coloured wool to match thier bags.
Adding a final layer of colour around the finished but wet ropes worked really well. The final layer was easy to wrap tightly around the core. I didn’t have to worry about “cracks” or “fissures” forming if I rolled a little too fast or not quite round enough. I think I will do that from now on, as it gave a nice, tight, smooth finish.
What I want to know is, does anyone know of a faster and or easier way to make ropes? They always take longer than you think they will, and if you’re doing more than a few, they are hard on your hands, or at least on my hands. I found ways to make small balls and large balls, but nothing on ropes. Any hints or ideas?
I want to make some small spirals that will work on the stick-type keychain/bag charm things I have. I did them with some sheep I had last year.
I have a T-shirt that says; Hold on, Let Me Overthink This. And this is where I am starting with this project. I took Helen’s Spiral course last year, and it was amazing. If you have a chance, you should take it. I want to scale this down to end up about a 3-inch drop on the spiral. So I am starting by thinking this is going to be really hard to do, so naturally it is.
I started by making an underlay spiral to use as a template and resist.
The spiral was small, as I said, so I had to cut my fibre as it was far too long for one of the layers. Can you hear the spinners screaming NOOOO in the background? LOL Also, I was being supervised by Jan’s Llama
After much fiddling, it was sturdy enough to be removed from the resist. I worked on it more, but the layout was not good, and there were thin spots and narrow spots.
All in all, a sad looking spiral.
Next, I made some prefelt to try.
I tried to stretch and shape it around the resist. I already knew this was not going to work well. Wet felted prefelt does not have the stretch of commercial needle felted prefelt. But I kept going anyway.
This one is better, but although it’s hard to see, the middle of the spiral is very lumpy.
Here they are flat side by side. You can see the pumpy parts of the pink better here.
Oh well, it was fun trying. My friend Hether decided they were just what she needed for her bike.
I taught a Nunofelt Scarf class a couple of weekends ago. I had a fun group of ladies who were really interested in learning this technique.
Here are a couple of pictures of the setup with the ladies working on thier layout. They used hand-dyed silk blanks and Merino wool. Then there were lots of extras for them to add, lots more merino in many colours, handspun yarn, speciality wools and several types of silk, silk top, silk hankies and silk throwsters’ waist. A few brought some of thier own alpaca too.
and the scarves they were working on.
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And then we were too busy enjoying the felting for me to remember to take more pictures. Well, I thought I took more pictures, but I guess I didn’t do it properly.
I had two ladies who had to leave early as they had a long drive. They worked diligently to be done before they had to leave. They did a great job, and I hope to see them again.
Here are the other 6 ladies and thier finished scarves. I am pretty sure they had a good time.
After that fun I had to get to work myself. I had to resupply The Log Farm store. They sold the last of everything during Sugar Bush. I have been busy making Dryer Balls and Felted Soap
Next are some drop spindle kits.
All 3 of these are fairly easy to put together and sell well at a relatively low price point. What do you make and sell in this price category? I have been thinking that cards with pictures of my felt might be a good idea.
After seeing Helene use some prefelt ribbon, I decided to give it a try too. I am thinking of differential shrinkage to get the shape of a shell. I thought it might work well with a spider conch shell to make the ridges.
I got my ribbon from the Olive Sparrow in Toronto. She doesn’t have it on her Etsy, but if you contact her, she has it. You can, of course, make prefelt and cut strips. But this is a fast and easy way to get going.
I made a 2-part resist so there would be an overlap on one side.
I made the inside pink, then added strips of the prefelt ribbon.
I added some blue for the outside. Sorry for the really bad picture.
Then of course the was lots of rubbing. I am using a rubbing tool from Moose Hill. It has a nice weight, not too heavy like others I have tried. I like to start gently. It does have a nice, wide handle, so it’s easy to hold and press down when that is what you want. Jan used my phone to take many of these pictures for me. She took about a dozen of this one, complaining that I was not smiling. Seems I do not smile when I am working.
Once it had shrunk a little, I cut out the resist and removed the non-spined side of the extra resist. If I left it, I think there would have been too much to curl inside for the middle of the shell. Then of course, fulling and shaping.
It wasn’t long into the fulling when I knew I had not used enough prefelt to get the differential shrinkage I wanted. I suppose I should have known better. But often that’s the way. You need to be reminded of what you already know.
Still, it didn’t turn out so bad
When I got home, I fulled the ridges in some and then clipped it all into shape to dry. As you can see, this made the base of the folded part pointy, and that remained after I took the clips off and let it spread out.
I wet just that part and fulled it back to round in a very short time. I had been anticipating a fight with it. I had tried to shrink this part more before clipping it with no success. This just reminded me of how, sometimes, it is easy to get more shrinkage after it has rested or dried and is rewet. I have no idea why that works, but it does.
After it was dry again, I was not happy with how the top with the points wanted to curl around instead of standing out, so I put a couple of invisible stitches at each end to hold it in position.
And finished. I like the finished shell, even if it didn’t go the way I planned.
I may give it another try over the summer, but as spring slowly arrives here( we had a little snow again the other day), I find I have lots of ideas and more energy to do things. I have things to make for the guild sale in the fall.
