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Online Class Schedule for 2018

Online Class Schedule for 2018

I have posted the online class schedule for 2018. Take a look at the classes listed under the menu item Online Classes to see the schedules for my classes and for Teri Berry’s classes. As always, the Wet Felting for Beginners online class is continuously available so you can sign up now for that one. We have also heard from several other instructors who might be interested in teaching so I will post about that when it occurs. If you are a felting or fiber art instructor that would like to teach some online courses with us, please fill out the Contact Us form.

Teri Berry’s Felted Concertina Hats will be available twice in 2018. This course will be held in February and August. The four-week hat making course will initially guide you through the different options for hat blocks. Week 2 will focus on making a stylish or quirky concertina hat. In week 3, you will make a super-cute snail hat. Week 4 will be an opportunity to catch up or make another hat. For more information click here. 

 

Teri Berry’s new course is all about making felt bags. The 2018 course dates will be in May and November. During this 5 week course you will have the opportunity to make at least 3 bags / purses. In week 1, we will make an animal themed spectacles/phone/pencil case. Week 2  will be spent making a small to medium shoulder / hand bag. The week 3 tutorial is a little more ambitious, we will be making a backpack with adjustable straps, multiple internal compartments and internal pockets. Weeks 4 and 5 will be for catch up / further development, you might like to apply your own design to a bag.

Embellishing Felt with Surface Design Techniques – A Mixed Media Approach, my four-part module online course will be offered every quarter in 2018. The dates will be in January, April, July and October. Each of the modules is only $45 and you can just take one or take them all. You just need basic felting experience and can take the modules in any order. The modules are listed below:

Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Lamination

This class is about learning the technique of paper fabric lamination and then using those results to nuno felt. Paper fabric lamination is a technique of essentially gluing paper to sheer fabric in a specific design. When  I first learned the technique, I wondered how I would use the result. Many artists use paper fabric lamination and layer the results together with stitching and other methods. When I looked at my samples, I saw sheer fabric with a design and thought “Why not try nuno felting with it?” I tried it, it worked, and I loved the results. It was a way to use my own designs and create a piece of nuno felt that was completely different and in my own style.

Screen Printed Felt Journals by Ruth Lane

Experimental Screen Printing on Felt

Have you put off trying to screen print because you thought it was too complicated? This is the course for you then. This course will teach you about a variety of methods of screen printing that are fun and easy although sometimes a bit messy!

Printing, Stenciling and Playing with Thickened Dye on Felt

Learn to make thickened dye and then use it to make designs on felt or silk. Create your own unique designs with stamps, stencils and stuff found around your house. This course will teach you to experiment and play with thickened dye.

Free Motion Machine Stitching on Felt

This course is all about how to use free motion machine stitching on felt. You will learn a variety of techniques that relate specifically on how to use your sewing machine and enhance hand-made felt. You will learn how to incorporate machine lace into felt, transfer designs to felt, thread sketching on felt and experimenting with new ways to use your sewing machine to embellish felt.

We look forward to an exciting online class schedule in 2018 and hope you’ll consider joining a few of the classes. You can sign up to be notified by email when registration opens. Just fill out the contact us form with the class name and date requested.

 

 

Upcoming Course Opportunities

Upcoming Course Opportunities

For those of you in the northwest United States and Canada, I want to let you know about a couple of upcoming fiber art courses. I’m excited to announce that Gail Harker is coming back to Montana to teach Level 1 Experimental Machine Stitch. The course will be held May 18-22 in downtown Kalispell, Montana. The deadline to sign up is March 18th. If you are anywhere close, it will be a fun class so I hope you’ll join us.

The photo above shows one of the pieces I created in that class when I took it in 2009. Here is a PDF about the course:

Brochure_L1M_Montana

The other news is that I am planning on teaching at Olds Fibre Week in June in Olds, Canada (just north of Calgary). I have 5 classes on the schedule including nuno felting a scarf, wet felting a phone sleeve, wet felting a cup cozie, wet felting a cat cave and wet felting a pair of slippers. There are also some other really interesting looking classes on the schedule for spinners, weavers, natural dyers and a few more felting classes. Registration for Olds Fibre Week opens on March 8.

purple scarf layout web

In preparation for teaching, I have started making samples. This is the starting layout for a nuno felt scarf that has a bit of extra cobweb felt on each end.

purple scarf layout with embellishments

Here’s the layout after adding silk noil and ramie. I used merino and ramie from Big Sky Fiber Arts that Karen so generously gave me. I used a 5 mm silk scarf that I ice dyed about a month ago.

Here is the finished scarf. The top left photo shows the wool side and the top right shows the silk side. You can better see the ice dyeing effect on the silk side but it does show in person on the wool side as I laid the wool very sparingly to get more of a cobweb type effect over the entire scarf. The bottom two photos give you a closer view.

I do hope you’ll consider attending one of these courses. I’d love to see you there.

UPDATE: Due to unforeseen issues, I will not be teaching at Olds Fibre Week 2016 after all. There will be other felting classes available as well as spinning, weaving, knitting, dyeing etc. Hopefully, I will be able to teach there in 2017.

 

Pandagirl’s Year in Review

Pandagirl’s Year in Review

I know I’m late to the party, but I’ve been traveling and have several family affairs looming that need my attention.

I started out in 2014 as a forum member and then in March I was a Global Moderator!  This past year has brought many challenges and delightful learning and wonderful outcomes in terms of felting.

My year started with experiments in dyeing.

2014-01-24 16.29.52

I shared my venture into encaustics.

2014-01-16 11.13.59

Tried my hand at painting with wool.

2014-01-12 12.05.33

Experimented with different wools.

2014-02-07 14.53.01

Participated in the quarterly challenges.

Jackson Pollock - Marilyn

Stewart Stephenson - Marilyn
Stewart Stephenson – Marilyn

 

Monet 2 after felting
Monet 3rd quarter

 

2014-10-19 13
Land Art 4th Quarter

 

Tried framing methods.

burlap 2

I broke down to drum carder envy and began my foray into making batts.  Woo hoo!

2014-11-14 15.15

Cathy and I tried indigo dyeing.

silk and thick n thinMy marketing blogs…

addiction biz cards wool side

 

 

 

 

 

I know it’s been awhile, but its more fun felting than marketing…  Sorry.

 

I taught a felting  class.

Toni
Toni and her placemat

 

There was a period of obsession with pods and vessels.

After rinsing

I ventured into free motion stitching.

moy layout

Then I experimented with embellishments and making a book cover.

finished front

Designing and making a handbag was a huge accomplishment for me.

hanging

I  experimented with 3D felting – grapes and flowers.

finished 2

2014-10-29 12.29

 

I learned a lot of new techniques in Fiona Duthie’s class.

2014-06-03 11.07.12

It was a busy year visiting farms, mills and fairs.

susan democarder back

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made scarves including a cobweb scarf.

2014-10-17 13.45

A big project was a 3D free motion stitched bowl, oh my!

2014-10-28 12.12

Felting a rooster, I learned to combine wet and needle felting.

2014-11-10 16.24

Our holiday exchange was an experiment of combining beading and felting.

2014-10-29 11.47.04

All in all, it’s been a very productive and inspiring year felting. Of course, there were many more projects that were completed.  It has been a wonderful year.  I want to thank all of you for teaching, inspiring me and encouraging me to do and try more.  Thank you!  A special thanks to my fellow moderators and Luvswool (Cathy),  Leonor at Felt Buddies and Nada for pitching in and contributing to the blog.  It’s been a terrific, fun journey.  I can’t wait to see what 2015 brings and what I learn and try!

 

 

Preparing to Teach

Preparing to Teach

If you teach classes, you already know how much work it is to prepare for a class. But for those of you who haven’t tried your hand at teaching, I thought you might be interested in the preparations that go on before a single student is taught a thing. My friend Paula and I are going to teach a couple of classes at our local community college, FVCC in early June. Today we spent all day preparing. That doesn’t count the time we have already spent planning on what to teach, filling out forms for the college and making a Power Point presentation.

Power Point Presentation

I worked up the Power Point presentation over a month ago and it would have been fairly straight forward if I remembered how to use the program. But I hadn’t used Power Point in a number of years so it slowed me down a bit. I spent at least three hours putting it together and then I had to have someone else upgrade it to Power Point 2010. The equipment at the college seems to be a bit ahead of my Power Point 2003. I never see the point in upgrading software if it still works.

Readying Class SuppliesWe headed down to Camas Creek Yarn as Paula works there and has an in for getting our supplies for the classes. The supplies are included in the cost of the class as that’s the way the college wanted it. In my prior classes, supplies were purchased in advance and just a supply list was given. So we spent several hours getting all the supplies together to put in bags so each student will have a “supply kit”.

Paula Measuring Pre-YarnHere’s Paula measuring out different colors of pre-yarn for the kits.

Confusing Ourselves

We were picking different colors to go with a variety of colors of roving. We needed 4 yards per pack but somehow got confused and started doubling the amount of pre-yarn we needed. Who knew counting was so difficult?

Picking Out Silk Roving

Next we added in some silk roving and silk hankies. So downstairs we went to figure out what colors would go with our color combinations we already had.

Silk HankiesHere are the colors of silk hankies that we chose. Paula dyed these.

Assembly LineThen we set up an assembly line to make our packs. Each pack contains Imperial wool roving, silk hankies, hemp fiber, silk noil, pelsul locks, silk roving, merino roving, pre-felt and pre-yarn. We are going to be doing three projects in the class and there are probably enough embellishments to do 20 projects. But we thought the students would appreciate extra embellishments for later use at home.

Ready to be BaggedThese are all the supplies in one kit.

All Bagged Up

Here’s our pile of bagged kits. I am making a supply list that will be stapled to the bag. But I need to make up some business cards to go in them as well. I’m not sure why I don’t have any of those yet?? (I guess I don’t listen to my own advice after writing all those Marketplace Monday posts.)

Felt Trivet Sample

Then Paula and I spent the rest of the day making samples for the class. We’re starting with a flat piece of felt with embellishments. This one is mine with a silk hankie, hemp, pre-yarn and pelsul locks.

Felt Trivet Sample

This one is Paula’s. She always adds more embellishments than I do. She used pre-felt, silk roving, silk hankie, pre-yarn, flax, silk noil and pelsul locks I think.

Finished SoapsThen we made felted soap. Mine’s orange and Paula’s is green.

Felted RocksAnd the last samples are felted rocks. Paula’s is on the left and mine is the hairy one on the right. All in all, we’ve spent around 12 hours preparing for a 6 hour class. This doesn’t include the time we’ll spend gathering up all the equipment needs, packing up the car and the preparations of setting up the day of the class. I like to be prepared, so I’m not complaining, just letting you know that the time a teacher spends is not just in the classroom. Hopefully, we’ll get enough students signed up for the class to run. Right now, we still have openings so if you’re in northwest Montana, we’d love to have you join us. Just click on the link in the first paragraph to sign up. 

Are you teaching classes? What are your thoughts about class preparation? Any tips for other teachers? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you take classes? Do you have suggestions for how teachers could be better prepared or suggestions for better teaching methods? We’d love to hear those too.

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