Felting and Fiber Studio

I have been volunteering in the shop attached to our local Museum for several years now.  I have to keep an eye on the Museum, welcome any visitors, dispense information (if I can) and serve in the shop.  Visitors are infrequent unfortunately and, because I get bored easily and can’t stand doing so, I tend to bring in something crafty to keep me occupied between times.  As I am using the Museum’s electricity to light and heat my work space, I feel that I should use the time to make something that could be sold in the shop to help to raise funds for the Sturminster Newton Heritage Trust which runs the Museum and also the town’s Water Mill, renting the latter from the Pitt Rivers Estate.

I have told you about the Mill before here and thought you might like to hear a little about the Museum and the things I have made (or attempted to make) over the years to sell in the shop.  Though first I must show you a chap who, a few years ago, came to visit the Mill with his mates from one of the local biker groups.

This is the building which the Museum Society, as it was then called, purchased from the Town Council in 2007.

The building started life in the 1500s as a cottage.  In the early 1800s it came into the ownership of the then Lord Rivers and was occupied by a farmer/baker and then a well known clock maker (we have one of his grandfather clocks in the Museum).  After being sold in the mid 1800s it was occupied by an insurance agent and then an auctioneer, before becoming a sweet shop and restaurant as well as a home.

Infamously, before the Second World War, the restaurant was visited for a meal by Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists.

After the war the property was bought by a solicitor and eventually sold to the Town Council in 1996.  The Town Council occupied the building until 2007 when it was purchased by the then named Museum and Mill Society.

The Town Council moved into purpose built Council Chamber and offices, which are part of The Exchange building. The Exchange was built and opened in that year on the site of what had been the largest Calf Market in the country but which had closed some 10 years previously.  The Town has had a market/fair since 1219, having been granted a Charter by King Henry III, and we continue to have a (much reduced) market each Monday with stalls around the town.

The first of my donations which the Museum sold (eventually) were these two small felt pictures of the Mill.  They were my versions of photographs which Graham, my husband, had taken.

Then I had a go at crocheting snowflakes, which did sell quite well in the run up to one Christmas.  I seem to remember that I have shown you these before but I can’t find the link so here are some of them again.

The Museum Shop has a number of items to sell which sport images of the Mill, Museum and, in the case of tea towels, our mediæval bridge over the River Stour.  I did use one of the tea towels to make a Memo Board for sale, with the intention of making a series of these if they sold.  Unfortunately that was not to be, the Memo board I made is still hanging on the shop wall.  Though to be honest I’m not sorry that there’s no call for more of them because it took a lot longer to make and was a lot more complicated than I had anticipated, and I had actually made it in my workshop rather than in the Museum shop, so it didn’t really meet any of my criteria.

In fact over the months I have come up with lots of different ideas for items for sale which haven’t worked:  Making books in boxes using unsold cards sporting very old photographs of Stur (as the locals call Sturminster Newton). Making Etuis, but I couldn’t work out how to get Mill, museum or bridge  images onto them; I would have had the same problem with making chatelaines with fabric covered thread cutters, scissors and needle books.  I did think of making pincushions to sit inside glass or ceramic pots or ornaments bought from charity shops but I couldn’t find a way to make sure the pincushions stayed inside them without using lots of glue, which I hate doing. I did try fabric paper weights and door stops, but obviously couldn’t use my sewing machine in the shop and hand stitching would have taken ages and probably wouldn’t have been strong enough to keep inside the grains of rice, which I was to use for the weights.

I was fast giving up on ideas for things to sell in the shop when my stint at trying to sell my scarves and fabric covered note/sketch books in 1855, our Artisans “Superstore”  https://www.1855sturminsternewton.co.uk/ came to an end.  I had not been able to sell much during the 6 months I’d allowed myself so the Museum Shop ended up with most of the unsold stock!

The covered books and the silk scarves aren’t on display at the moment due do lack of space.

I have at last found some things which I can make in the shop and which are going on sale in the runup to Christmas – I have become addicted to making Norwegian Gnomes.  Some people these days call them Gonks, but they are nothing like the Gonks that used to be around in the 70s.  Here’s one I made back then – it still sits on my landing windowsill.  I can’t bring myself to get rid of it.  It is made out of a hat which was left over after one of our WI jumble sales.  I stuffed it, putting in a scrap fabric base, and added eyes, ears, hands, feet and a tail, and have loved it ever since!

For the gnomes I used scrap fibres, mainly scoured but unprocessed merino, to make the basic shape and stitched large buttons on the bases to help keep them upright.  I stitched on noses, in most cases these were wooden beads, though there were a couple of needle felted noses.

I covered the bodies in various unused fibres, mainly prefelts or carded batts which had become compressed in storage, or failed UFOs.  I added “hair” – some of the large stock of locks that I found in my stash (I’d forgotten that I’d got so much!) and added beards and moustaches from the same source.  Then I covered the pointy hats with more of the fibres used for the bodies.  A few of the Gnomes were female – plaits from scrap yarn rather than curly hair and facial fuzz.

I started off making Autumn Gnomes but soon ended up making Christmas ones.  There were quite a collection in the end as I was making them at home and at various workshops as well as in the Museum – I told you I was addicted!

Here’s what the Museum Shop looks like at the moment in it’s Christmas finery and with all the goodies currently for sale.

The Museum proper has 6 rooms housing various alternating displays which at the moment include:

Our famous writers/poets Thomas Hardy (he wrote The Return of the Native while living here); William Barnes (his dialect poetry is famous – you might remember the song Linden Lea – if you’re old enough!); and Robert Young (he also wrote dialect poetry under the nom de plume Rabin Hill).

A fascinating display on the history of weights and measures (for instance a cricket pitch measures 22 yards long, or a “Chain”.  I always wondered why a chain?  Now I understand, there was an actual metal chain used as we have one on display.)

We have the earliest map available of the Sturminster Newton and surrounding area dated 1783.

Swanskin  (as mentioned in the link at the beginning of this post)

The Hinton St Mary Roman Mosaic – this was part of the floor of a Roman villa found in the next village up the road from us, which is also the base of the Pitt Rivers Estate previously mentioned.  The mosaic was discovered in 1963 and unfortunately was removed and is now in the possession of The British Museum.  It was hoped that it could be returned to Dorset when the Dorchester Museum was enlarged but they won’t let us have it back!

As part of the Roman display there are a number of photographs showing what flora and fauna was introduced to this country by the Romans.  You’d be surprised what plants and animals they introduced that we now consider to be “native”.

Upstairs we have a new working model of Sturminster Newton Railway Station showing how it used to look before being closed in 1966.  Very few of the original buildings are still here.  That will be a permanent exhibit (hopefully!) whilst most of the others will change from time to time.

Certainly the Museum is well worth a visit at any time of the year.