Exhibition photos

Fifty Shades of Felt

The first instalment of exhibition photos are now up on the Gallery, check them out some excellent work! 

Workshop with Katia Mokeyeva

The numbers on this workshop were limited to eight due to the high skill level of the workshop! The eight of us arrived full of enthusiasm, with bags of wool and all our equipment!

Ann cutting out her pattern.

It was interesting the way Katia had worked out the pattern, although for The Feltmakers North Girls it was a bit mind blowing until we got our heads around it! 

We got instruction on how to lay down our fibre and we set to work!

Gail with head down working hard.

Close up of the detail of one of Katias jackets!

Adding detail after the fibres had been laid!

Deirdre's colourful piece

Deirdre then added pices of cheesecloth to add texture to the outside of her garment.

Dorothy arranging her silk for maximum textural effect.

Mary's sculptured wrap.

Mary felting her piece using a sander and very important ear muffs, it certainly  made the process easier!

It was two days of hard work and we all learnt a lot, with some pleasing results, although they are not all finished yet. We are looking forward to seeing them at the show and tell at the next Felt in!

Talking of which the next felt in is on Saturday 21st November and we will be doing weaving of prefelts which is great fun. Ann our chairperson will be guiding us through this technique and there will be prefelts available to purchase on the day! As usual we start with a welcome cup of coffee, and a catch up chat with everyone!

We hope to have all the photos of the exhibition soon so keep checking the blog!

The entries are coming in for the sheep photographic competition I'm glad to say but please keep sending them in. email feltmakersnorth@gmail.com

As I can't enter the competition, saying as it was my idea, I thought I would end with a sheep photo I took recently in Donegal. 

May be you can think of a caption for this photo?

Look forward to seeing you all on Saturday at 10.15!

Fiona Harvey

As Requested

I have been asked a lot recently where we buy our wool and silk etc from, so I said I would put the details on the blog so everyone can get the web page addresses correctly!

Feltmakers North buy from four main supplies they are listed below in no particular order and  we are not being paid to advertise these businesses to you!

www.winghamwoolwork.co.uk

www.worldofwool.co.uk

www.wollknoll.eu  Click flag in corner to get page translated!!

www.treetopscolours.com.au

So I hope you find them useful!

Fiona Harvey

Good way to spend a Saturday morning!

We had a lovely Saturday morning making Nuno, with Jayne Burgess. Jayne had brought lots of samples to give us ideas and show us different techniques!

She certainly showed us the diversity of nuno felting, and we all had great fun making our sample pieces! She stressed the importance of making a sample before starting a larger project so you know how it is going to shrink and react!

                                   Jayne's demonstration piece!

There were a great variety of colours and above Deirdre has used some muslin rather than silk!

We had a first at our felt-in Sarah launched her booklet called Fleece to Felt, a guide to using native wools, and her first print was sold out in a matter of minutes, so well done Sarah!!  If you would like a hard copy £5 plus postage and package or a Pdf is available from Sarah email spiderlingcreations@gmail.com

Joanne carding her wool ready for her next project!

During the free felting in the afternoon we had great fun, relaxing and felting whatever we wanted, making the most of having two tables and lots of space.

Keep the sheep photos coming, they are great and I am so pleased I have had a response from far and wide!! So Thank EWE sorry couldn't resist it! 

Keep an eye on the diary dates so you don't miss out as we have lots of exciting plans for the next 12 months!! Enjoy your felting, and see you next month.

Now what do you think of this fabulous photo, can you work out what exotic location this was shot in? I wish I was there with the beautiful blue sea!

Well are you guessing?..........................................................

This photo was taken at Luskentyre, Isle of Harris, which I believe is meant to be gorgeous and the locals have a gorgeous soft accent!  

Fiona Harvey

Fifty Shades Of Felt

The Exhibition looked absolutely fabulous, I was so proud of all our members that exhibited, it was stunning, and there were fifty shades of Felt!!

From Left Ann Mc Cullough (Chairperson) Fiona Harvey (past Chairperson) Simon Community representative and Gail Cooke(past Secretary)

Also in the exhibition were our friendship blankets which we had balloted to raise money for The Simon Community. Feltmakers North raised £500.00 for the Lisburn branch, and we presented the Cheque to their representative on the opening night. The friendship blankets were made up of felt squares, which all the members had produced and we sewn together into a colourful and warm blanket, when finished they looked amazing!

    Some of the work on exhibit and friendship blankets to the right!

 I thought I would share a few of the comments written in the visitors book at the exhibition!
"Wonderful exhibition"

"Some stunning work, fabulous!"

"Most interesting exhibition I've ever been too!"

There is a lot happening from now until Christmas with Feltmakers North, next Saturday we are having our monthly Felt in, when we will be trying out nuno felting! Check out diary dates for the details of all our other events between now and Christmas!

I almost forgot, I will be posting soon lots of fabulous photographs of the exhibition, so keep checking the blog!

I have heard lots of talk of our photographic competition, but I haven't yet received any photos? Send them in as soon as you take them, as you can enter several times, in fact I hope you do!! This competition is open to everyone, so all of you that read our blog from overseas please email in your sheep photos to feltmakersnorth@gmail.com I am feeling optimist and I hope I will get some soon!

Just ending with this wee cutie!

Hope to see lots of you on Saturday, and remember there is free felting in the afternoon!

Fiona Harvey

Jumping for Joy!!

We were all glad to be back to the first felt in of the new season, and Sarah gave us a wonderful talk on Native wools! It was great to hear from a such knowledgeable person as Sarah Jarden. As Sarah has some sheep herself, she also is a spinner and a feltmaker. So she was able to give us practical tips on the felting qualities of the different types of wool!

Sarah had brought with her a variety of fleeces, so we could experiment felting with them!

It was a busy morning with membership renewals and leaving in exhibits for our exhibition, which opens in The Island Arts Centre, Lisburn on Tuesday 29th September at 7pm.

Here Sarah had felted up some of the native wools including Blue Leicester and Shetland.

Shetland Fleece!

Here are some of girls wearing their new Feltmakers North aprons which they were given on renewing their membership!

Don't they look great!

After seeing all Sarah's lovely photos of sheep I had an idea!!......... 

So we are going to run a COMPETITION we would like you to take a photo of a sheep or sheep and email it in to us at Feltmakers North, (feltmakersnorth@gmail.com) even better if you can tell us the breed and the place/country where you took the photo! We would really prefer it if you took the photo yourself and didn't take it from the internet!! There will be a PRIZE of course and its open to everyone. The closing date will not be until April next year so you have plenty of time to get some lovely photos, autumny sheep, snowy sheep, springy sheep or lambs,etc

Needless to say I cant wait for the photos to pour in so please do not disappoint me, they need to be in j.peg formation if possible, because later on we will have a gallery of all the photos and show the winner!!

Keep checking the diary dates so you don't miss out on our exciting programme for the year!

Fiona Harvey

Hello!

 

Katia A line Vest

Hi Everyone, well its that time again to get back into the routine and back to felting!! We have our first Autumn Felt in on Saturday 19th September, when we will be exploring the delights of Native wools with Sarah Jarden! It will be a busy Saturday as we will be renewing our membership and Ann and I will be collecting in your felted treasures for our exhibition! We cant wait to see all the beautiful items!!

For those of you becoming or renewing your membership we have a little surprise for you........ you will have to wait for 19th to see what that is!

The application forms are now available for the Katia Mokeyeva workshop in November this sounds like its going to be an amazing two days!! Places are limited so get your applications in quickly!

We are looking forward to seeing you all on the 19th!

Fiona Harvey