Busy but fun filled Saturday!

Elaine McCombe one of our committee members took the morning felt in!

We had a busy morning with Elaine, she was showing us how to make holes in our felt, on purpose! She demonstrated two two techniques one using a resist, and she added in lots of interesting fibres to create a textured piece!

Bronwen carefully laying out the fibres, before she made her holes!

Here is Leah enjoying the morning session, while modelling her pink sheep name badge made at last months Felt in.

This is the Chairperson (me) giving out our new Feltmakers North pens which advertises our blog, I was also asking members to suggest names for our exhibition, which we will be holding in October in The Island Arts Centre, Lisburn. So if any members have any ideas you can email them in to me, I was very pleased with the response on Saturday we had some very good suggestions, and some very funny ones too!
After a quick lunch Gail Cooke our secretary took our first "Start from the Start" workshop. The idea behind these workshops is to give beginners good instruction and to learn a good technique, so they can move on with confidence!

We Had twelve every enthusiastic girls, some of whom had done a little felting and some complete beginners! Gail had the idea to make a small collar, rather than just learn to make a square of felt, the girls were delighted with this plan! The workshop took on the form of step by step instruction so no one would get left behind!

A few of Gail's inspirational sample collars.

On this one Gail had made a little zip broach to hold it closed!

Sarah gentle rubbing her wrap, she had chosen a cyclamen pink wool to work with!

Photo above and below shows some of the lovely embellishments added to the scarves! These were inspired by the colourful samples Gail had brought along.

Everyone worked hard and were able to go home with a lovely collar, which they would shape and dry at home. Going by the comments on the evaluation sheets this was an enjoyable experience which they would like repeated, so watch out for our next Start from the Start workshop!