Welcome back! February's Felt-In got off to great start with our very creative Deirdre Gallagher introducing Shibori techniques to the group along with a few spikes and roping to bring together into a beautiful wet felted necklace! Ann made reference to it being more of a day workshop! We all agree! What a busy morning, so much to take in, learn and to do, the excitement in the room and the silence ...as everyone was quietly busy lol. I'd love to know what Beverly was giggling at? We did have plenty of laughs, you should know our group by now!  Shibori - Spikes Ropes / cording & Inclusions

We really did experience all of these on the morning - can't wait to see what everyone brings back for the Show & Tell table.  

Love how versatile felt can be. Taking my own blended roving that has been carded on the carding drum and made into a cord or roping to form a necklace to wear. So much more easily made! 

(no cracks girls to cover over) Look at the mix of colour, just speaks the sea or ocean to me. Murlough Bay Beach, in the Co Down that swipes down to the Mournes is where I draw my inspiration from. displaying different parts to the techniques that when put together formed my display pieces of jewelry for the morning felt-in. Lots of information to take in! The visual dairy from my HND Art & Design course came in handy to show the importance of drawing from your own sketches, photos and what you like and love form your surroundings - then you take it to sampling and then your finished pieces.

 Adapting as you learn and grow. Just play!

Our group at Feltmakers North Guild really go out the whole way not just with the sampling for what we are doing that morning but also with a gift offered up for the ballot as well as the presentation of our work to the group, I think you would agree. I think Sandy had her eye on this necklace from the start of the morning, did she win the ballot? You will need to read on to find out LOL.

Inclusions made with stones & coloured gems. Shibori made with marbles of different sizes.

This is a beautiful scarf made using Shibori - just look at the effect, I love it!

Margaret & Sandy busy being creative with bright colours shown. Sandy is now trying out the necklace, it really does suit her. We have Deborah & Johanne (our sister act) having a great time with Anna in the background trying not to look at the camera.

Show & Tell table-more beautiful cushion covers made & a pleated vessel from Sandy's felt-In and workshop - aren't they fabulous!

What a display of fabulous work, by our members! We have cushion covers, pleated vessels, bracelets, framed Red Robin,a book cover and lovely handbags made by Ann on display.

What a great display of work and talent!

What do you think?

Well, the ballot has been pulled and
who 's number came up? Well you will never believe it! Sandy was our winner, congratulations!

Beautiful on you Sandy, Well done!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the February Felt-In, it was another great morning being very creative with lots of laughs. Going home with many ideas and plenty of homework says Sharon,

 (nice homework though). 

Look at the lovely pleated vessels - thanks to Jayne, Leah, Patricia, Susan, Anna, Sharon, Beverley & Sandy for bringing them in for us all to see, and all the other bits! What a great selection.

See you all on, Saturday 18th March

Deborah, over to you with felted Wall hangings!

This is going to be exciting!

Bye for now.

All visitors welcome, £10 for the morning.

Deirdre Gallagher

Chair of Feltmakers North Guild

Welcome back to Feltmakers North Guild Blog!

                        

                            Welcome to Feltmakers North Guild 

                                                               Re-launch to our Blog

                                                                     February 2023 

                        

                                 Saturday 11 February - Workshop 'Pleated Vessel'  by Sandy

                                                                                             

Lots more to come, we are just getting started!

 

This is the final post for Feltmakers North.  From here now on we are posting on Instagram which means that everyone gets to see all the pics and updates immediately they're uploaded.

All you need to do is scan the QR code on your mobile and it will take you straight to the Feltmakers North page.  Or you can simply do a search on Instagram to find Feltmakers North.  

 

Sun shines for the presentation of Feltmakers North Community Outreach Project 

What a great morning we had last Saturday at Hillsborough Village Centre when we were able to hand over the completed felted pieces to the representatives of Brookfield School Sinead, Jenny and Liz.

While having to observe the very strict Covid regulations, we managed to fit in a few faces from the Guild to be present at the end of this project.  It marks the completion of our 10th anniversary celebrations, albeit a little prolonged.  

 

Images of some of the completed blankets and little individual bits and pieces designed specially to help the children with their concentration  

These little squares are examples of the pieces which were sewn together to form the blankets again designed to bring comfort and aid concentration in class.

We had a great morning chatting about the project and using the opportunity to catch up a little with our first face to face meeting since September 2020.  Of course we definitely can't meet without a cuppa and guess what . . . . . 

Delicious biscuits which Deirdre organised as a special treat for a special day!

The completed items were all packed into a massive bag for the school to keep and finished off with a super label made by the very talented Mandy

The presentation was a lovely way to finish off our felting year and to give ourselves a big pat on the back for having managed to do what we set out to do more than eighteen months ago.  I have included lots of pics below to give you an idea of the work which our members readily engaged in and who deserve a massive big thank you!!

We very much hope to welcome everyone, new faces included, to the September Felt-in on Saturday18th at 10.00 o'clock in the Hillsborough Village Centre.  Get the date in your diary now and look forward to what Deirdre and the team have in store!!

 

MAY  RINGS THE CHANGES!!

This lovely image is from our very own Jayne who created the Mackintosh inspired rose during our online workshop with the super Nikki Collier.

More of this later but first to the business part of our 11th AGM held in early May.

Gail, Ann and Mary stepped down as office bearers having served for a minimum of two years.  Ann and Gail will remain on the committee to support the newly elected girls for this coming year.  Both Sarah and Sharon have also stepped down and our thanks go to everyone for their hard work and commitment to Feltmakers North.

The Guild's new chairperson is the very talented Deirdre Gallagher who has been a member for a good many years and we are looking forward to Deirdre taking us to even greater things!  Mandy has taken the role of secretary and Sandy will be our new treasurer.  Dympna has also joined the committee this year.  It's so good to see so many talented and creative members of the Guild on the committee.  2021/22 will no doubt be a year to remember!

Once the business got sorted we had a little coffee break and then got stuck in to a special treat for members with our very first online workshop.  This was led by Nikki Collier and she shared her stained glass effect technique with us.  It was a very relaxed and enjoyable session with Nikki gently bringing us through the various stages of her technique and members just loved being able to create a little piece during the two hour workshop.

Elaine's creation

These colourful feathers were one of the ideas from Nikki and offered lots of opportunity for adding colour and pattern.

Ann thoroughly enjoyed making this 

Pleasaunce loved the technique!

I'm sure we'll see lots of variations over the coming months as we begin to experiment a little.  Our thanks to Nikki for such a gentle introduction to online workshops and for sharing her skills with us so generously.  

 

Spring has arrived!

This gorgeous little creature is one of Sarah's spring arrivals and isn't she adorable?  More pics below.

Our March Felt-in looked at making craters and channels in felt samples.  This was a technique I learned at one of Annemie Koenan's workshops organised by the International Feltmakers Association.  These are great techniques which can be used in lots of applications with felt.

We were concentrating on samples to be used in the Community Outreach Project with Brookfield School in Moira.

The channels can be cut much shorter or left as in this sample.  We're hoping the children will explore these  channels and enjoy the experience.

We had a great turn-out via Zoom for our Saturday session and hopefully we'll have a good pile of samples to stitch together very soon.

Craters were also demonstrated and these are really shibori style indentations in the felt.  They can be left as they are or turned out and perhaps filled with a felt bauble or even some scraps of wool.

All our felt-ins this year have been recorded on video except for our September meeting when we were very lucky to be able to meet in person. 

This means that we have built up a small library of videos with various techniques which members should find very useful to either learn something new or simply refresh their memories.

Dorothy and Cecelia were the lucky winners in our  March draw and they were given their choice of some lovely wool tops to keep them going for a while longer.

This month the winners will receive some little curls courtesy of Sarah so do keep watching out for all your information from Feltmakers North.

It will be wonderful to get back to meeting up again in person but in the meantime we will continue to hold our sessions via Zoom.

Maybe next year we'll be lucky enough to see from curls from this little girl!!

No prizes for guessing who this is!!

  

Hope to see you all very soon and in the meantime Happy Felting!!

All the best

Gail

 

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