Sunday 8 November 2009


Just finished my last workshop before leaving for Australia.
We had a felt slipper day with Maggie, the serial felter, Roz who will only use black and white, Theresa and Vivienne, who had the day as a birthday present from Theresa.
We made a last of our feet using plastic bags and brown vinyl tape and then drew our feet onto brown paper before making a plastic resist. The slippers all came out beautifully. Here is a picture of them. It will be twinkle toes (and cosy toes) for Christmas.

Sunday 1 November 2009

I have just come home after an exhausting two day workshop with the wonderful Jill Denton. She gave a workshop on making a nuno felt waistcoat or vest. We had participants from as far afield as Mongolia, Siberia and Canada.
It was a wonderful two days. We laid out our chosen fabrics after we had all made patterns with Jill's help based on her lovely designs. It's quite a worrying process as the pattern has to be 50% bigger than you want the finished item to be. It's all well and good if you are sylphlike and pixie faced but some of us (and I have to include myself in this category) are well endowed in certain areas and therefore our patterns were frighteningly big.
Once we had got our fibres down on the fabric it was time to start the felting process so we were swimming in a sea of soapy water. Just when we thought that these big baggy pieces of fabric were never going to shrink the magic happened and we all finished with our chosen designs beautifully shrunk and felted. I for one will be wearing mine on the flight to Australia. With any luck the air crew will be so staggered at the beauty (the waistcoat not me) that I will be whisked up to first class.

Here is a picture of the group at the end of a long weekend. Feltmakers rule OK!