February Fun with Pleasaunce!!

It was so good to see everyone at our virtual Felt-in on Saturday morning and to catch up with all the news.  Pleasaunce had made a great little video demonstrating how she made some lovely shapes using a cookie cutter as a guide.  She led us through the basics of needlefelting giving lots of little tips as she went along.  

A few months back Sarah had demonstrated how to make little pockets in felt.  Now it was the turn of Pleasaunce to show us how to make little shapes to place in the pockets.   As you know we are all working away making things towards our community outreach project with Brookfield school.  The idea is that the felted sample pieces will be sewn together to make little weighted blankets for the children.  

Pleasaunce made a little dog, a rabbit, some star shapes and a teddy and a panda.  She needlefelted a piece of jute rope into each shape and then securely sewed it into the piece of felt.  It means that the children will be able to take out the little toy without fear of it being lost.  What was most appealing was the choice of background Pleasaunce made for each shape.  Her star was in a little pocket which was embedded into a sea of felted stars and her rabbit was in a field of carrots and flowers!  

These gorgeous little shapes have been created by Mandy and I absolutely love her butterfly - I'm sure the children will too!

We had our usual Show n Tell on Saturday and Jane has been very busy creating a little man from a repurposed needlefelted dogs head ! 

Jane says she's still work to do on our little friend but he looks pretty good to me!  Love his little boots.

This little piece is a mix of needlefelting and wet felting.

Some of our members who are also members of Feltmakers Ireland attended a morning virtual workshop organised by FI where Feltmakers North's friend Gabi McGrath from Dublin shared her method of making a felted book cover.

Lovely idea for gifts or just to enjoy for ourselves!

Please please continue to make things for the project.   We haven't got that long to go now and we do want to be able to present enough felted pieces so that each child who needs one will be able to have their own piece from Feltmakers North.

Keep well and safe and happy felting!

All the best

Gail

 

 

 JAYNE'S JANUARY FELT-IN

Our Felt-in on Saturday saw our own very talented Jayne sharing a myriad of fibres and tips on how to use them in felt.  Judging by the number of things she'd gathered together on her tray we were definitely in for a treat.

Our virtual Felt-in began with the usual Show n Tell 

  

These beautifully coloured little eggs were      created by Jane F using polystyrene shapes and felting over them.  Super idea for Easter!

Busy bee Jane has been felting away in her studio and was proudly wearing this lovely lightweight scarf which is secured round the neck with a large loop.  She shared the link below with everyone so now's your chance to make one for yourself!

 https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2021/01/15/interesting-new-scarf-type/

These little creations were made by me after our December Felt-in with Sandy.  As you know they are felted around stones and I gradually added more wadding as I made each one.  I liked the spongy feel of the talisman and thought that the children might also enjoy that along with the weight of the stone.  The white talisman is at prefelt stage, so a bit more work required there! 

Wilma showed us a lovely bag which she had made using techniques she'd learnt at Lyda Rump's workshop in 2020.  The bag had lots of compartments and Wilma had finished one with a zip, perfect for valuables.  Sorry no pics - maybe Wilma will share a couple later.

Once we had shared news and felting projects we settled down to watch Jayne's video together.  Jayne had searched her stash and collected a tray load full of fabric scraps, dress trimmings,  natural and synthetic fibres, wools, yarns, shiny things, glittery things and just about everything you would ever want to include in a piece of felt!

In the video we see Jayne going through each item and suggesting ways to incorporate them to create different textures and effects.  In the image below she's showing some wool nepps felted into the surface of this sample.  

Yarns of various types including acrylic and nylon are trapped here under a piece of very lightweight muslin which will be felted on to a lay of wool tops.

We spent some time looking at each of the items before moving on to see Jayne working on a small sample piece where she felted cotton fibre, heavy silk fabric, flax, knitted wool fabric and a heavily sequinned strip of fabric directly on to wool tops.  Jayne used a wet sponge to add soap through the netting and it worked very successfully which impressed many of us!

At the end of the video Jayne chatted through some of the processes and answered questions.  It really was a very informative and enjoyable session and we all learnt lots of valuable things to help us continue developing our felting skills.  Our thanks to Jayne for taking the time to share her skills and ideas with us and for making the video for us all to share.

The Community Outreach Project is progressing well with members continuing to make small sample pieces to use in the knee blankets and we are very hopeful that there'll soon be enough made to start putting them all together to present to Brookfield School in late spring.  Please continue to create little pieces for the children, I know they will be very appreciated.

This adorable little creature was created by Jane F who is the Ireland representative of the International Feltmakers Association.  Jane was reviewing a book on behalf of the IFA and thought she would try one of the techniques in the book.  What a super outcome - well done Jane!

In case anyone is interested this is the link   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Masterclass-needle-felting-dogs/dp/1787113833     The author is Cindy Lou Thompson

That's all for now guys.  Happy felting!

Cheers

Gail

 HO HO HO!      🎅🎅🎅🎅🤶🤶🤶🤶🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

Merry Christmas Everyone!  

🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅

We had a lovely morning last Saturday with our very first live Felt-in via Zoom where we felted alongside Sandy.  The morning was spent learning how to make a Tarantellic Talisman.  The inspiration came form Katrina Virgona and featured in the Australian magazine 'Felt' a while back.  

 

This shot captures some of Sandy's little talismen or is it talismans?!!  These little objects were designed to be held in the palm of a hand whenever you have an irresistible urge to dance!  They are surrounded by lots of folklore but we just wanted to make little objects for our project with Brooklands school.  

Mandy captured a screen shot of some of us watching as Sandy did a demonstration and we got to ask questions before beginning in our own creations.   This was the closest we were able to get to our special Christmas Felt-ins of the past - Santa hats and glitter but we had fun just the same!

To begin the project you need to select a stone that is smooth, palm size and doesn't have any sharp edges.  This is then wrapped in wadding before we begin to add the wool.  

Some members got stuck in straight away and others were content to watch and learn.

This image captures the moment when Sandy dipped the wrapped stone in water - it definitely takes two hands!

The two hours passed very quickly and we didn't get to complete our own talismans.  But we were inspired and some of us have moved on a couple of steps with adding the tails which we think the children will love!

Below is Ann's little stone which still needs a little more work but showing lots of promise!!

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I have included a couple of images of my own yellow and black stone which definitely needs lots more work!

I made some extra legs but I think I'll keep them for another talisman!

A huge thank you to Sandy for a great morning and for those of you who couldn't make it, don't despair we will be forwarding a video for you to try making your own little pile of special stones!

Maybe these little stockings might inspire us to make our own before the Big Day!  

Wishing you all a very Peaceful and Safe Christmas and looking forward to seeing everyone in 2021.

Best wishes Gail

 

FELTING FINDS!!

Over the last two months members of our guild have been busy felting away and feeding their creative juices.  Despite not being able to meet in person because of Lockdown, members have managed to share ideas, make beautiful pieces and contribute to our Community Outreach Project by making little felted squares and pieces for the children at Brookfield.

Our sharing of ideas and skills was enabled through using Zoom.  Our own Deborah and Sarah made videos demonstrating  particular techniques and incorporating these into small samples to be used as part of our project.

Deborah concentrated her video on adding bumps and holes to the little felt pieces.

Isn't this little octopus simply wonderful?  Deborah shared this as part of Show n Tell at the beginning of her video.  She was making it for her little granddaughter in America. 

No Sarah isn't singing just yet - the camera caught her midflow!

Sarah was showing us all how she made little pockets in felt which hopefully the children will be able to explore.

The videos were then shared with members and at the October and November Felt-ins via Zoom we discussed the techniques and shared some of our work with one another.  While it wasn't as good as the real thing, it has kept us all together and still making felt.

Each video lasted  about thirty minutes and was a great way for us to share things together.  Feltmakers North is very grateful for all the help given to the video making by Deborah's talented son Peter.

These lovely samples were made by an inspired Jane after watching Debbie's video!

And this was made by Cecelia - gorgeous shaped holes for enquiring little fingers. 

Here's a close-up

It's just great that members are beavering away making little pieces.  Soon we'll have enough to begin making up the lap blankets.

I'll just share some photos of other work members have been creating maybe in the hope of providing inspiration for some lovely Christmas gifts!

This image comes from Deirdre who's been experimenting incorporating silk etc into  slashes formed over a sphere. 

  Another of her images.  I love Deirdre's idea of using small scrap pieces of silk to create something very different - well done to her!

The little bags have been created by Deborah and below see her beautiful wrap created with wool threads - simply divine!

This wonderful array of felted pieces comes courtesy of our very own Norma who is becoming a very accomplished feltmaker!

Finally a fabulous collection of little squashes from a very talented Pleasaunce!

Thank you everyone for sharing and looking forward very much to our December Felt-in on the 12th.

Bye for now

Gail

 

JANE'S JUST PERFECT EDGES!!

Today saw us back to basics and what a perfect way to launch into our Covid Conscious Felt-ins!  

Hillsborough Village Centre was eerily quiet this morning but not for long as Feltmakers North got back to business after our six month absence.  How good it felt to see everyone again - although unfortunately with most of us it was eyes only!  With carefully restricted numbers things didn't feel quite the same but everyone was eager to work together again as we concentrated on making some small samples to be used in the weighted blankets Feltmakers North is preparing as part of the Community Outreach Project.

But first it was Show N Tell and lots of us shared some of the pieces we'd made during lockdown.

Jayne's gorgeous bag with a leather strap which she made as part of Lyda Rump's workshop in March.

Isn't the leather trimming really something on Ann's bag - just makes it very special.

Sarah's bag with machine stitching which beautifully highlights the flower and leaves

Ann and Gail had done some eco-printing with Nicola Brown in her online courses and shared some of their pieces

Some girls brought their finished scarves from our recent Shelley Steele workshop and everyone admired the amazing colours.

Elaine's little granddaughter shared much of her lockdown time with her grandparents and under Elaine's watchful eye the pair created their first dragon!  Still to be stuffed and given the means of flight but a lovely creative thing to do over lockdown.  Her bag seen in the picture is from Lyda Rump's workshop.

I honestly think we could have spent the entire morning looking at the creations and chatting about techniques and the merits of various wools but we had a project to begin.

Jane talked us through the myriad of samples she had made discussing each one in turn and then demonstrated the careful lay using an A4 template as a guide.   

Each sample was carefully labelled and Jane suggested lots of interesting things which could be included in our samples which would be child friendly.

The creme de la creme came when she shared her technique for ensuring straight edges using netting and soap and very careful handling of the wet wool.

Finally once everyone had completed their individual samples to the fulling stage, Jane again went through each of her fulling techniques to shrink the sample by 30% - essential for uniformity and really good solid robust felt which would stand up to lots of wear n tear.

Jane against a background of lots of clutter!

I'm going to share some of our photos from today just working away together.  I'm sure you'll notice, we are all wearing masks and are at least 2 metres apart!

Anna showing a little van she created to be used for the children's project.  The pieces didn't get finished by the time we had to pack up so Jane's fulling techniques will have to be completed at home - all except speedy Sarah who always seems to get her things finished!

Some of the yet to be completed pieces for the weighted blankets.

A big thank you to Jane for leading the session and inspiring everyone to get back to felting and helping us to refresh some of those skills which might have slipped a bit!

I'm going to sign off with another couple of images of pieces shared today.

A close up of Ann's beautiful hanging made during lockdown.

And finally I couldn't resist not sharing these with you made by Maighread for her new grandchild

Just adorable - congratulations!!

Please keep in touch with us and look out for news of the next Felt-in planned for October - so fingers crossed. . . . . .

All the best

Gail