Catherine O'Leary

Great News we have been awarded a very generous grant from The Arts Council for Northern Ireland and we are set to go for a wonderful three day workshop up on the north coast! The cost of the workshop for the three days is £120, incredible value. For the £120 pounds you get three days workshop with lunch included, and some materials ie Felbi (which is prefelt from Australia) this is an expensive material, so its even better to get it included in the price!

Feltmakers North has reserved some rooms at The Bayview Hotel, Portballintrae which successful applicants can book, but this year we are letting the applicants arrange it themselves. We hope that we will all meet up in the evening for dinner as usual!

Application forms will be available from Tuesday 27th August from Ann McCullough so email her amccullough1949@gmail.com places are limited and they will be drawn from a hat on the closing date and successful applicants will be notified asap! We are also looking for helpers to help out over the three days, it can be one person for three days or different people, so if you would like to help contact Ann. Accommodation will be provided for one helper if they are helping over the three days!

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It isTime to Felt!

These are the beautiful Blue Faced Leister Sheep, and in September at our felt in Gail Cooke will be using their wonderful wool, in all three of its natural shades. Do not worry if you do not have any Gail will have some for you to purchase! (These are very gentle sheep, when I was a child living on a farm we had a beautiful BFL called Barbara, who nearly always had triplets every year!)

For those of you attending our September Felt in, we would like everyone to bring with them a useful tip for felting! It can be something like bring a bar of olive soap and some grated soap to a workshop, or something completely different. It should be interesting and hopefully useful to hear everyone's ideas! If you are unable to attend the felt in you can always email you tip to us and we will read it out!
                                                                                

Here is a small sample of some of the wool we have ordered for the Nuno felting workshop in September. This wool has come from Treetops in Australia, which specialises in fabulous colours, in silk, wool fibres and silk fibres. The workshop is Saturday 28th September and starts at 10 am and runs to 5pm in Hillsborough Village Centre, applications are available from Ann email amccullough1949@gmail.com places are limited and names will be pulled out of a hat!

We hope to have some good news this week about our residential workshop with Catherine OLeary in November, so keep an eye out for when the application forms will be available again places are limited. Again contact Ann.

The committee is looking forward to seeing everyone in September for the felt in, so we hope you can make it!
Fiona Harvey

Two day summer workshop

Nicola Brown of Clasheen was out tutor for two days at the beginning of August, the topic was a complex bag! Nicola was most generous with her time and knowledge, we all learnt a tremendous amount!
                                                                          

We had a choice of styles of bags, Denise decided to make a bag for an I pad with an internal pocket for an I phone, here is Nicola discussing the size of the internal pocket!

                                                                      

                                                  
Dorothy taking care at laying her fibres, we were using cap merino which is a type of merino a lot of us hadn't used in a bag before!

 Nicola is demonstrating how to place the wool at the edges so they stay fine and are not bulky!

Above two of the bags after they have added their decoration to one side!

Bronwen and her bag with pattern laid out!

Dianne on her first workshop with Feltmakers North! She is preparing her spikes to add to her I pad case!

Jayne still smiling even though she is at the rubbing stage, which went on a long time! However the end results were well worth it!

Nicola is showing us how to attach the spikes to the I pad bag!

 Denise's colourful I pad case with flap to keep it closed.

 Bronwen's bag with her integral handle, has worked really well!

The spike are now attached to Dianne's fabulous I pad case! I think we all stretched ourselves at  this workshop under the careful guidance of Nicola.

Some of the bags at the end of the workshop, not quite finished but well on their way!

The happy but tired felters at the end of the workshop. It was a fantastic two days of fun learning, and great spending time with like minded people. Nicola was a great tutor, who made sure she circulated around the room, trying to help everyone as soon as they needed help! I would also like to thank Liz Nicholls who was Nicola's helper and did a great job. Not forgetting the ever helpful staff of Hillsborough Village Centre, I must say we are so lucky that we have the use of their venue, the staff and facilities are brilliant!

I hope that the girls will bring their finished bags to the September felt in, so we can, see them in all their glory, so watch out for more photos!

Keep checking the blog, we hope to have details of Catherine O Leary residential workshop in a week or so, again this will be a draw for places, but we will be looking for people to help. So if you don't get on the workshop, there is a possibility that you could get selected for a post as helper! The forms are now available for the nuno workshop on 28th September so email Ann, details on workshop section of Blog!

Enjoy the summer and I look forward to seeing you all in September. Fiona Harvey