Good Wishes for 2016!

 

This is the only picture I could find of a wind swept sheep, I really hope that last night all the sheep in the neighbourhood found shelter as Storm Frank was pretty wild!
Just a quick post to wish everyone who reads the blog a happy and healthy new year! I hope you will continue to follow our blog, and send in sheep photos for our competition and leave comments, we love to hear from you!
 All the photographs of our very talented membership are now up on the gallery, they are from our exhibition held in the Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, earlier in the year! So get a wee cup of tea or coffee put your feet up and take a look, the photos are really inspirational!

I will end this wee post with these lovely wee fellows! They are Baby Doll Southdown Sheep! Happy New Year!!
Fiona Harvey.

Curls at Christmas

We had a wonderful relaxing morning with Gail Cooke, learning different ways to incorporate curls into our felt! Gail had dyed the curls for us in an array of beautiful colours.

Gail gave us a very informative talk before we began on the technique we were learning, so we all felt confident to proceed!

Gail had brought along a selection of things she had made using curls, her work was very inspiring!

 Gail's nuno black and white wrap, which oozed texture!

Then it was our turn to have a go, it was great as everyone's was different, some using native wools and some using merino.

It was a very productive and colourful felt in.

After our welcome cup of coffee we had a brilliant show and tell of members work. 

Sarah showed us her recent needle felting! Impressive!

Elaine modelled her beautiful purple nuno dress! Impressive! These are just two of the great work on show at the show and tell!

When we had finished our curly samples Feltmakers North treated us all to a lovely lunch and we all sat round casually talking and catching up, in a calm non Christmas rush atmosphere!

We will be back on 16th January with the Dynamic Dorothy Dinsmore!!!

So have a great Christmas and a Happy Healthy New Year!

Two photos because its Christmas! 

Fiona Harvey

Christmas Tree Workshop

Christmas tree workshop led by Fiona Harvey

A veritable forest of gorgeous felted Christmas trees adorned the village centre today.

Fourteen feltmakers worked hard all day under the expert tutorlage of Fiona Harvey.

Fiona had brought along some of her own creations to inspire. She took everyone through each step of the process from securing the pots and making the tree trunks from cinnamon sticks to making the felted covers for each pot.

Fiona and Deirdre working hard!

Sisters Deborah and Joanne spending the day felting together.

Tina and Mary!

Sharon and Wilma securing their cinnamon stick trunk.

Vicki and Debra doing some serious glueing.

Ann and Dympna !

Then came the challenge to make each cone shaped tree using a resist. Stars and hearts turned out to be the theme of the day

with some felters using curly wool locks, angelina and silk fibres as their individual finishing touches. 

As Dympna said"An excellent day thoroughly enjoyable!"

Gail Cooke

I would like to thank Gail Cooke for writing the blog post for me and also being a great helper during the workshop. I was so pleased we ended up with a forest of trees at the end of the day!

All different but all great!

A magnificent sheep I saw in Donegal!

See you all for the Christmas felt in and lunch on Saturday 19th December, for fun felting with curls under the direction of Gail Cooke.

Fiona Harvey

Weaving our way through November!

Ann McCullough was taking the November Felt in showing us how to weave pre felts, in to colourful tartan felt! However before Ann started we had our show and tell!

In the show and tell some of the girls brought along their garments form the Katia Mokeyeva workshop! The work was amazing, above is Maria modelling Dorothy's fantastic piece of work!

Dorothy's garment from the back!

Here is Ann wearing her own garment, she made hers with a collar!

Afterwards Ann gave her demonstration and had a great supply of samples, which gave us inspiration on a cold and snowy morning! she also brought along a cushion and bag she had made using the woven prefelts and they were fabulous!

Beautiful piece by Elaine McCombe.

Barbara Finlay was excelling herself using interesting variation of prefelts and some silk, I would love to see this when is was fully felted!

Bronwen weaving lime green and black into a striking piece!
We had a great morning and it was lovely to see so many inspite of the weather.

Our next felt in is on the 19th December and Gail Cooke will be working incorporating curls into our work which should be fun! It will then be followed by our lite Christmas lunch, so we hope to see you all there!

This photo shows freshly dyed sheep that run in view of the highway near Bathgate, Scotland. The farmer has been dying his sheep with Non Toxic dye since 2007 to entertain passing motorists!Hope this made you smile!
Fiona Harvey

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