Registration for Teri Berry’s Felted Bags online class is now open! This is a great course and was well received, so it’s exciting it’s being run again. There are limited spaces available so if you want to register, click on this link and fill out the registration form.
During this 5 week course, you will have the opportunity to make at least 3 bags/purses.
In week 1, you will make an animal themed spectacles/phone/pencil case, this could be in the image of your favourite pet or a friend’s pet (they make very thoughtful gifts) or a mythical beast of your own imagination! You will use multiple resists, introduce some nuno felting and make a closure entirely from wool.
In week 2 you will learn to make a small to medium shoulder/handbag (purse to our US friends), this tutorial will demonstrate how to add internal pockets, a magnetic clasp, adjustable shoulder straps and take shaping the felt to the next level so the bag has a flat bottom and stands up on its own.
The week 3 tutorial is a little more ambitious, you will learn to make 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, Teri will be on hand to answer any questions and talk through any challenges your design might create.
As with all the online courses, there will be lots of opportunity to share your work with the rest of the group and share ideas.
The content of this workshop is suitable for felters with some experience, you do not need to have made a bag before but if you are confident making felt pods, bowls etc. over a resist you will be able to make these bags.
The class begins on February 13th. The price for this five-week course is £60 GBP (approx. $79 US, $105 Canadian, €70, $112 AUD, $119 NZ) and the number of places will be limited to 30 students.
The registration for the Felting Fantasy Fish online course is closed but we do have one lucky winner of the free spot in the class. Using a random number generator to choose of from the comments left on the class announcement post, the winner is:
Robin G.
Congratulations Robin, I will contact you shortly with details about the class.
This four-week, hat making course will initially guide you through the different options for hat blocks (from DIY to the extravagant!) and choosing one to fit. Although this module is technically week 1, I will send it out on receipt of payment so you have as much time as possible to make or buy a hat block if you don’t already have one.
Week 2 will focus on making a stylish or quirky concertina hat and will include guidance on how to create a resist for your head size, how to add a felted “pig tail”, creating a brim and forming sharp folds that remain in place. I will also describe how I blend colours and make the “silk stripes” used on some of my hats.
In week 3 we will make a super-cute snail hat. This tutorial is a must for anyone who hates rolling! I will provide my template for you to enlarge to your hat size (I will provide a useful technique that can be used to enlarge items of clothing that you would like to make in felt but need to allow for the shrinkage). I will then go on to explain how to make the eyes on stalks and securely attach them to the hat as well as well as how to create the shell and shape snail’s foot to form a brim for your hat.
Week 4 will be an opportunity to catch up or make another hat, I will provide examples of other hats and their template designs that used the concertina method which you are welcome to copy or, if you prefer, I am very happy to help you design your own hat using this method. The possibilities are almost endless!
This is a guest post by one of our forum members ‘Teri Berry’. Teri has a wonderful blog if you’d like to see more of her work. Teri has completed the 3rd Quarter challenge in record time and tells us about it here:
Marilyn posted the 3rd quarter challenge a couple of weeks ago, initially I was disappointed because this meant I had been mulling over the 2nd quarter challenge for so long I had missed the end of Q2 (shame on me). Determined not to let the same happen again I was spurred into action. I already had an idea from Q2 that I wanted to use silk cocoons to add some three-dimensional impact, a little bit like this sample:
Added to this, I have been wanting to interpret a favourite photo taken by my better half on a diving trip into felt for far too many years so this seemed the ideal opportunity. Isn’t this fish a beauty?
As per Marilyn’s challenge instructions, I ran this photo through 2 programs, Colour Adobe and Palette Fx.
I much preferred the wider range of colours provided by Palette FX so set about dyeing some cocoons, yarn and silk while blending some previously hand dyed Norwegian and Merino wools (with a little bit of dyed trilobal nylon for some sparkle – I’m a sucker for a bit of sparkle!).
Considering the materials were all dyed in the same bath, I was surprised by the range of colours that came out of the orangey brown bath, everything from bright orange to a lovely chestnut brown. These are the carded batts:
I started by laying out two tones of purple, when the piece is fulled, these different tones will create subtle areas of light and dark on the face of the hanging.
Then laying out the batts, I love working with batts, they are so quick and easy to lay out.
I like to think about movement and the balance of colours and tones when laying out my wall hangings, I find repetition of shapes and colours works well. Here I have laid out 3 deeper colours and added splashes of a bright colour to create movement. I think it is important to keep stepping back and looking at your piece, if it doesn’t feel right now, it’s unlikely to feel right as you add more layers and detail.
Next I added my dyed cocoons, ponge 5 silk and felt ropes for extra texture before wetting it out to regain some control over the growing pile of fluff.
Then some of my dyed yarn, I was thinking about how to lead the viewer’s eye around the hanging when laying these out.
Looking at it again, I felt it was too dark and needed more contrast and the large bumps from the cocoons needed to be balanced by something, the solution, to add some yellow chiffon with felt pebbles underneath.
I made some prefelts with the left over batts, I love working with prefelts and silk papers, they permit a far wider range of shapes than I can create with loose wool tops.
From these I started cutting out shapes, laying them on the base. For me, this stage is very much trial and error; placing piece of felt, deciding I don’t like it, cutting them into smaller pieces, swapping them out for other colours, moving them around. After some time I finally settled on this.
And started rubbing, and rubbing, and rubbing…. I quite like the look of the plastic covered in suds with the design showing through.
More rubbing, and finally a bit of throwing (the large bumps created by the cocoons made this a difficult piece to roll).
Here is the fulled piece after opening up the cocoons to reveal their dyed innards, contrasting with the wool wrapped over their surface. I’m really pleased with the one that spilled out a trail of silk as I opened it up.
I was a little bit disappointed with how the edges of the orange prefelts had gone fuzzy (I should have used a firmer prefelt) so added some machine embroidery to visually sharpen the edges again.
Letting me loose with a sewing machine on a piece of felt is a risky move, I couldn’t stop a just “fixing” one area 🙂
After looking at it the next morning, some more embroidery was needed…
Unlike most of my hangings the felt on this one is relatively fine so instead of hanging from a sleeve or wooden rod I decided to mount it on a canvas frame. To ensure the felt doesn’t stretch and go baggy over time I fixed it to a sheet of poplin cotton with running stitch before stretching it over the frame and stapling it into place.
Thank you Ruth, Zed, Ann and Marilyn for inviting me to post on the forum, this has been a real pleasure. If anyone would like to see some of my other work, please feel free to visit my blog at http://teriberrycreations.blogspot.co.uk
