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

 

 

 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