Christmas Baubles

Our Christmas felt in was taken by Cherri Conlon, who got everyone in the mood for Christmas. She showed us a great range of felted tree decorations, giving us a some good tips along the way!

Some of the girls listening intently before starting to needle felt their decorations! The atmosphere was very relaxed and all the girls really enjoyed Cherri's gentle manner of teaching!

Donna being careful with her felting needles.

Fiona added some sparkle to her bauble. Despite the risk of injury we were very lucky and no one pricked their fingers!

Cherri's Snowman

As usual a great range of different permutations from the girls of Feltmakers North!

We were also lucky to be treated to seeing some of the pieces made at Catherine O Leary's workshop

Elaine's fabulous piece! 

Deirdre's amazing family tree wrap!

A Detail from another gorgeous wrap, made with Catherine O Leary at Feltmakers North residential week end!

Next month we have a change of DATE and TIME we are having our felt in on Saturday

 14th December starting at 1pm with a light lunch Please email and let us know if you are attending so we can cater for everyone attending! After lunch Dorothy Dinsmore will be taking the felt in and we will be making a beautiful broach, check out workshop/felt in section to know what to bring!

Three fabulous days with Catherine O'Leary

I think this lovely photo of Deirdre sums up everyone's opinion of our time with Catherine!

Catherine brought with her a great selection of samples giving us all so much information and ideas we could not wait to get started!

Dorothy making her nuno prefelt, which later on would be cut up and added to her garment.

After the hard decision had been made as to what to make, we set about cutting the needle felt.

                       Lots of discussions and thought went into the planning of our pieces.

Throughout the three days Catherine gave us lots of advice and tips on how to learn this new technique and also how to improve our felting skills! Catherine is a great tutor and so generous with her knowledge.

                                 One of Catherine's examples of stain glass felting.

                                                      The other side.

So many very different designs made the workshop a tremendous learning curve as we got ideas from each other as well, as Catherine!

The view from the hall was inspiring!

Denise getting her garment fitted at the end of the day!

The group photo, members of Feltmakers North tired but happy with their achievements I hope to include more individual photos on my next post, as the standard of the work was fabulous. So to all the girls that attended please bring your garments to next felt in, so I can get good photos of them.

Next month Cherri Conlon will be taking the felt in and we will be needle felting Christmas decorations, so remember your needles. the sales table will have polystyrene shapes to buy, just bring your usual felting kit and some wool tops and of course needle felting needles! After the morning session you can stay on for free felting to members and a there is a small fee for non members, remember your lunch! Check out the felt in/workshop section for all the details of up and coming events!

Surface Decoration

There was a great turnout for October's Felt in with Maria who had a wonderful range of samples of surface decoration to share with us!

With cords and spikes and bubbles and spheres all competing it was hard to decide which technique to choose to sample!

We learned the basic techniques of using prefelted cords and spheres to enhance the flat surface of felt with some lovely results.

Maria showed examples of how to cut into the surface of felt which had been stitched to contrasting colours of cotton fabric. A particular favourite was adding standing up triangles which looked very impressive.

There was great chat while everyone worked hard to ensure at least one sample piece was completed before the end of the session.

Some of the lucky people who did the nuno scarf workshop in September brought along their finished pieces to the envy of the rest!!

A big thank you to Mary Larkin who very thoughtfully brought along some freshly baked chocolate buns for us all to enjoy!

Gail Cooke.

 

Using the Lovely Tree Tops Wool and Silk

I took the September Nuno workshop for Feltmakers North, using the lovely tree tops wool and silk, the colours are fabulous, so we were off to a good start! Saying as I took the workshop I cannot comment on how it went from a students point of view but I had great fun and was very pleased with the end results. Everyone went home with a very original, beautiful and colourful wrap!

I showed the girls three scarves I had made so as they would see what I was expecting of them, then they set about planning their design.

I was very grateful to Dan Corbett for coming to take photos of the workshop, I am sure you can tell they are taken by a skilled photographer! Its a pity he couldn't come more often!!

I am going to include some of the comments from the evaluation sheets to give you the response of the girls! "Clear instructions, beautiful materials and friendly atmosphere"

"Well run, informative, friendly tutoring, lots of support and great fun."

"Great venue, with free parking and easy to find!"

"Harder than most workshops which was great for the felters who have been felting for a while."

"An excellent topic with great discussion!"

Having a wee chat with some people that dropped in to see what was going on!

"More of this standard of workshop aiming at the intermediate felters!"

I will post more of Dan's excellent photos in the next week, and I would like to thank him again for giving up some of his free time on a Saturday. Also I would like to thank Gail Cooke who was a great help and also kept a constant supply of tea and coffee throughout the day!

 

In October we are having Maria White taking the felt in and extended felt in on bumps and textures, more details on workshop section. The lucky participants for the Catherine O'Leary workshop have been selected and notified, and I hope they are all very excited and delighted that they got on the workshop!

 

September Start

What a great start we had with Gail Cooke as out tutor for our first Autumn felt in! Gail brought some beautiful inspirational pieces made with Blue faced Leister wool in its three natural colours.

We started making prefelts in BFL to make a mat similar to the one above!

The turn out was terrific and it was really good to catch up with familar faces and also meet new ones! Here they are all listening carefully to the advice given by Gail.

I had to take a photo of these nails, that were busy felting!

Some of the fabulous work produced during the morning!

Sorry this one has gone in sideways! It was a great morning and we also decided instead of a show and tell to just tell each other helpful tips!Three best tips from the morning were;

When using bulb sprayer, spray round edge first to avoid wool travelling.

Stand straight think of your back and have one foot in front of the other.

Have a face cloth handy to dry your hands(this avoids wet trousers as I always rub my hands on them!)

Some of the girls had brought their bags from Nicola Brown workshop and I didnt get a chance to take photos so I hope they will bring them next month so I can include them in the blog. On saturday we have our nuno felting workshop so there will be another post soon! Forms are available for extended felt in in October 19th, email Ann address in workshop felt in section!
Bye from me, it is great to be back felting I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!
Fiona Harvey