Lumps and Bumps with Dorothy!!

It is always such a treat for us at Feltmakers North when Dorothy leads the Felt-in and today was no exception.  She brought a huge array of samples with her to get us all inspired. 

Of course we had our usual Show n Tell before we all got felting and Fiona who's hiding behind her hanging, shared her felted image of mountain sheep which everyone loved

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Flo has been doing a course on embellishing and shared these little fish which she's been experimenting with and Norma is  understandably very proud of her scarf which she made from mohair yarn.

'Old Homer' the Holm oak in Warrenpoint which was nominated for European Tree of the Year was the inspiration for this hanging which Flo is working on.

It is so good when we share our work as it provides a great opportunity for receiving feedback and support in developing ideas and also gives us all a kick towards getting creative ourselves!!


Dorothy whose own creations are a great source of inspiration, talked us through some of the myriad of samples which she had brought along explaining about using up to nine layers of prefelt as in the hood of this little jacket to pinching and stitching to create ridges and to adding nepps to make uneven lumpy surfaces.

She demonstrated how to create little raised bumps by adding resists, in this case small marbles,  in the middle of the lay.

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Most felters decided to try this technique on its own but Helen really experimented by incorporating quite a number of different shapes into her sample; it'll be great to see the final results. 

Maria and Patricia having fun

Leah and Bronwen concentrating hard!

Cate works hard with those marbles with lots of support from Norma

Alwyn, Jane and Helen enjoying themselves!

Jayne and Dorothy happily concentrating

Our morning went by very quickly and only a few very hardworking felters managed to get to the cutting stage but as the little samples below show there are already some very interesting results!

We all had a lot of fun, learnt from a real expert, enjoyed ourselves and are already

looking forward to next month when Ann will be demonstrating shibori techniques in feltmaking.

I'll sign off with this close up of one of Dorothy's samples where she has used prefelt, nepps, silk chiffon and stitching to create this little gem. 

Happy Felting Everyone!