Christmas Cheer

Christmas Cheer!!!

All the Girls

We all had great fun on Saturday at our last Felt-in of the year.  Elaine demonstrated her take on using silk cocoons and silk rods in felt.

She had cleverly dyed the silk cocoons and some of the rods and brought along some samples of how she had used them.

Of course we had our usual Show n Tell which is always inspiring.

Sarah's winged creature!

Jane's slippers

We all had great fun throughout the morning practising some of the new techniques, using the carder to produce some lovely blends, eat chocolates and have a laugh!!

There was lots of creativity in full flow as you'll see from the range of samples produced

Our last felt-in of the year was rounded off in good cheer with a little Christmas buffet and lots of "Merry Christmasses"


All that remains is for me to wish all our felters a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and to share a little image from a wee trip to the north coast at the weekend.

Christmas is Coming!

3 Wise Sheep!!

Well felters it's time to plan for Christmas and beyond.   I think the 3 wise sheep would tell us to relax and enjoy ourselves and share some Christmas spirit among friends. And what better way than at the December Felt-in?  There will be a Bring n Buy Sale, so gather up your felting goodies to sell and bring lots of pennies to buy some more goodies to add to your stash! 

Elaine will be finishing off the year with the last of our focus on silk sessions, demonstrating how to use silk cocoons and rods with felt.  So that's a lovely treat to finish the year. 

And as if that isn't enough the session finishes with Christmas goodies of the edible kind with a buffet lunch to set you on your way to a very festive Christmas.

Lonely sheep!

This little lady was captured just last week in the Mournes.  I'm sharing it with you as a possible inspiration for our next workshop where we'll be learning the techniques for creating a lovely felted wallhanging.  Our own Elaine and Sarah will be leading the workshop which takes place on Saturday 4 February and I think we're in for a treat.

I did say at the beginning that Christmas and beyond is coming, because not only do we have the wall hanging workshop but also we are delighted to announce that Gabi McGrath will be back to take another of her inspired workshops and this time she'll be helping us all to create one of her stunning little bags incorporating pieces of leather into felt.  This will be on 4 March so watch out for details.

Gabi's lovely bag

So girls plenty of inspiration to pass on to friends and family for Christmas presents eh!!  Watch this space for news of our programme as it unfolds and I look forward to seeing you all soon.

                                      Mandy Makes Merry for Christmas!!

Oh boy did the girls have some fun working on Mandy's ideas of using scrap pieces of silk and odds and ends to create lovely little decorations all in good time for the festive season.  Continuing on the theme of using silk in our feltmaking, Mandy Jackson shared some of her impressive skills and ideas at Saturday's Felt-in.

Mandy made an impressive array of little samples to inspire everyone and she had used silk hankies, silk threads and silk fabrics.  Prefelts were made and then everyone used the templates to cut out and finish their creations. 

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There was plenty of time for chat and the usual fun.  Helen definitely gets into the Christmas spirit!
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Some of the girls had been working on their silk hanky technique and Sharon had made herself a lovely scarf.

Some eager beavers managed to take home some finished pieces but most were happy to finish off their blanket stitching at home!

Well done everyone for creating such lovely little pieces and a special thank you to Mandy for such a good session.

My thanks also go to Ann for supplying this blog entry.

Gabi McGrath's Slipper workshop

Gabi's sample slippers

Beautiful works in progress

Didn't everyone do really well judging by the pic above?  The girls from Feltmakers North had a super fun day on Saturday at the workshop led by the very talented and wonderful tutor Gabi McGrath. 

Gabi in the early stages describing the Perndale wool    

Gabi demonstrating while Yvonne looks on - Bronwen looks thoughtful!

As Ann who was acting as FN's helper on the day, said who would have thought making slippers could be so much fun!

What a great day we all had with Gabi, who travelled up from Dublin to take our workshop. Gabi is an experienced tutor who took us carefully through all the stages to produce very wearable slippers.

The girls had a lot to think about what with making their own templates, designing their slippers and then all the hard work of actually creating them.

 

All will be revealed!

Jayne's foot takes a gentle tap from Gabi's spoon!

There were lots of interesting techniques using Perendale wool and the day flew by as we rubbed, rolled and tapped our slippers into shape.  Everyone was encouraged to enhance their creations with additional embellishments/layers/inclusions and the results were stunning!

Many thanks Gabi for a really worthwhile workshop and thank you also to Yvonne who was a super help to everyone.