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. 

Hanky Doodle Dandy!

Dympna's little bag with lots of silk hankies

Well we might not have been singing but we were laughing and having lots of fun learning about silk hankies and how to use them in our felt.

Ann led the session and explained all about how the hankies were made - she'd even brought some photos of a visit she'd made to Turkey last year where she visited a carpet making factory and saw zillions of silk cocoons in large vats being prepared for use in beautiful Turkish rugs.

Ann points out the piece of cocoon still trapped

She'd brought along lots of samples which showed the versatility of these wonderful little things  from adding texture and colour to creating subtlety in a felted picture, silk hankies were well and truly explored.  We stretched them, scrunched them, flattened them, shaped them all with very interesting and differing results. 

Spot the hanky!!

These are some of Ann's lovely samples which proved very inspirational for our

felters to have a go themselves!

During the Show n Tell members shared some of the things they'd been working on which led to lots of compliments and loads of questions!

The morning passed in a flash and produced some beautiful samples all very different and all very inspiring.

Well done to everyone and keep on FELTING!!