About The Studio Site
Can you believe it’s just over 5 years since we first started the Felting and Fiber Studio site and blog? We’ve had a lot of new visitors and commentors on the blog recently, and lots of new members on the forum too, so I thought it might be time to do a reminder about everything we have to offer here on the Studio site. The main page where all the blog posts appear is the ‘Home‘ page. Whenever you open the website up, this will be the page it brings you to, so after having a good look around, click ‘Home’ to bring you back here.
The ‘Contact Us‘ page is for getting in touch with us about anything which doesn’t relate to any of the blog posts or other pages. Maybe you have an idea for a Guest Post, or some info we can add to the site, or just want to make sure you don’t miss out on any classes! Leave your name and contact email and send us a message in the ‘comment’ box.
In the drop down menu under ‘Online Classes‘, you’ll find a list of the classes we offer.
If you hover over each one in the menu, you’ll find they all have sub-pages, where you will find more information, testimonials and galleries of work produced by the students who took the classes.
The ‘About Us’ page tells you a little bit about why we started the Studio site, and there are sub pages for each of us with some info about ourselves and our interests.
The Felting page gives a brief outline about what felting is, and in the drop down menu, different types of felting: Machine, Needle, Nuno and Wet, all have their own pages with more in depth info and sub-pages with galleries of examples.
Most fibre artists like to branch out a bit from their main area of interest, and you probably know from our blog posts that we do too, so it’s no surprise we have a ‘Mixed Media‘ section on the website. As well as the Mixed Media page, there are sub-pages for Beading, Hand Stitching, Machine Stitching and Surface Design. Each of these pages also have gallery pages featuring lots of work and inspiration.
The Fibers section is packed full of information about wool and other animal fibres. The main Fibers page explains some of the different terms that are used to describe wool in its various stages of processing. The Wool and Other Animal Fibers page has a lot of information about wool, and animal fibres such as Alpaca, Angora goat, Llama and Camel. There is also an explanation of the Micron and Bradford Count systems of measuring a fibre’s fineness or coarseness; and a PDF guide to the most common sheep breeds and their Bradford and Micron numbers. The gallery page features photos of different animal fibres. Preparing Fibers has a guide to processing your own wool, from washing a raw fleece to carding it into fluffy batts ready for felting or spinning. There is a photo set and detailed description. And if you want to go even further in fibre prep, have a look at the Dyeing page for some inspiration.
The ‘Other Fibers‘ section has lots of photos and info about the fibres and fabrics we commonly use in felting such as silk and organza fabrics; fibre prepared into tops like bamboo, banana, viscose, and the more unusual fibres like crimped nylon, plastic and Angelina fibres.
There are individual pages for Silk; other Protein Fibres; Cellulose Fibres, Synthetic Fibres and also Fabrics. The gallery sub-pages for each one feature lots of uses of all the different fabrics and fibres.
A site full of info wouldn’t be complete without a Tutorials section. There are free Dyeing, Felting, Fiber preparation and Mixed media tutorials all written by one of us, including a video on how to make your own roving using a diz, PDFs on Degumming silk and dyeing it; Stitching on felt, making mixed media wall art, using a sander for wet-felting, a beginners guide to using a drop spindle and dyeing with food colouring.
And if you can’t find what you want there, there are also links to outside sites in the Links/Resources section, including rosiepink’s free felting tutorials and their fantastic e-book showing how to make amazing felt artwork and some felting and fibre suppliers too. A fairly recent addition to the site is the ‘Shop‘, where you can safely and securely buy various books, e-books and tutorials on wet felting and needle felting.
One thing the Felting and Fiber Studio site needs and which has helped it be so succesful is a Community.
We’ve been so lucky to get to know and become friends with so many like-minded people from all over the world. From 4 of us starting the site 5 years ago with a handful of supportive friends commenting and spreading the word, we’ve grown to have almost 350 regular followers; a very popular forum; lots of fellow fibre artists and bloggers regularly contributing with guest posts; and really popular online classes. So as well as this post being a guide to what’s available on the site, it’s also a chance to say Thank You to everyone who’s been with us since day one, and to those who’ve joined us along the way, and supported us not only with blog views and comments and writing blog posts, but with sponsoring banners on the forum to pay for hosting and to keep it ad-free. Thanks! 🙂