Category: Reviews

This morning ‘s meeting commenced with a short  talk by Soosie Jobson on  “Presenting and Tagging Your Work for Sale”. As  a number of members intend selling their felted pieces  on the Feltwest stall at the Rotary Fair at UWA next Sunday and our stall at the Fremantle Arts Centre Bazaar in early December, it was a helpful and timely reminder of  the importance of attractively displaying and safely storing work intended for sale,  creating appropriately sized  tags to provide sufficient seller contact details and any special  garment-care  information if necessary and included practical information about  where to purchase  cellophane bags and    ordering  tags and business cards on line.

We were delighted  at this meeting to again welcome FeltWest  member and textile artist, Sue Clay,  from  West Yorkshire, UK. Sue spoke to us about a wonderful felt  project she had conceived and worked on earlier this year  which became the focus of  the Yorkshire Yurt festival held in  Holmfirth from 1 July to 5 July 2014  up to the eve of the Tour de France commencing in Yorkshire. As part of this project Sue had earlier worked  with children of different age groups in 11 local schools and with different artists making 3 D  felted animals, very large colourful  birds, cushions to lounge on and felt pictures. These were all used to decorate a 25 foot yurt, the large felted birds being suspended from the apex of the yurt. Five exquisite 5X1 metre hand felted panels  were draped to line part of the ceiling and walls of the yurt. The pre felted panels were  decorated by Sue with pre felted flowers, sheep, cows, bicycles, hills, streams, brilliant sunsets, rocks and other   landmarks of the Yorkshire landscape. Sue  hand rolled each panel and  each took approximately 1 month  to create. She brought 2 of the panels to show us as well as a short video about the yurt during the festival. You can view the video on U Tube ( easily found if you google “ Yorkshire Yurt Festival”). She also kindly brought a gift for FeltWest – a signed print depicting her five beautiful felted panels. Activities in the yurt  were scheduled daily 10 am – 10 pm for  5 days and  included music, poetry reading and story telling for all ages. The decorated yurt was obviously a great success and  a marvellous introduction for many to the art of felting. Sue also said how much she enjoys coming to our TNT meetings whenever she is visiting Perth and loves the colour and variety of our work, and the generous sharing of skills and ideas and warm friendliness of members at our meetings.

TWO OF THE PANELS FROM THE YORKSHIRE YURT  by Sue Clay

There was an interesting range of  felted work brought along by members to our October meeting. Alison Gomes showed us a beautiful blue, green and brown cobweb scarf she had made at Vicki Hearne’s workshop last month. It was of  fine, even thickness and draped beautifully. She said she had laid it out in a bit of a lattice pattern  and in her next attempt using this technique she would try  for a more organic effect.

Jeanette showed us a very pretty teal and blue shoulder bag she had made  with a special interior pouch designed for her mobile phone. She noted she was pleased with the colour separation  she had achieved in the bag’s design. (sorry no photo)

New member Jen Thomson said she was very happy to have received lots of feedback from members at the meeting when she brought along her delicate nuno felted paj silk in Chili & Pepper colourway with ruffled edges and decorative buttons.

Sue Eslick modelled her latest very fetching hat featuring 2 horns, and decorated with  round prefelt shapes of various colours on a navy background. She also showed us a felted round , domed shaped clasp. She said she had achieved the dome shape by laying a thicker amount of wool around  the clasp’s inner circle and thinner layer of wool around the outer circle. The clasp is finished with a metal pin pushed through its middle.

Sue Swain showed us her finished fabulous ¾ length nuno felted jacket which she had made at Jan Manning’s workshop using natural coloured wool laid in a diagonal pattern on beige muslin.

Chris Gray wore a funky necklace she had made at Nancy Ballesteros’ workshop on Meditation Beads.She had felted different coloured embellished large wool beads and strung them together to make a very distinctive necklace.

Soosie Jobson brought along a green  cactus which she made in one piece using 8 resists. So life- like are her cacti and succulent sculptures that when she puts them about the rocks in her front garden visitors think they are growing there! She says she has plans for an on line exhibition and is writing a booklet on how to make these 3 D felted marvels. She also showed us a beautiful 3D wall hanging she had made depicting a forest floor with  layers of  leaves of different colours and sizes made from nuno felt.

Judi Barkla brought along some gorgeous felted embroidered stones to show us and which she says are  meditative to make.

Judy Barkla designed this nuno dress awhile back but we always enjoy seeing it!

Sue Espie has been making Christmas  angel decorations to sell at the Fremantle Arts Centre Chrismas Bazaar  and the Rotary Fair at UWA next week. Needlefelted with dresses, hair, and wings of roving, the meeting thought they should sell like hot cakes.

Juliet Hargreaves said how much she enjoyed Mary Ann Dawson’s  recent baby bunting workshop Although the jacket she made there has already been given to a baby, a photo of the jacket appears in the review she wrote about the workshop. Juliet currently has some work displayed in the Biennale Exhibition 2014 of Designing Women (“Seams and Layers”)  on show at Nyisztor Studio, 391 Canning Highway Melville  22 October – 5 November 2014.

Jill Jodrell said she had been given a white batt of indeterminate fibre but which was very cobwebby and so she put some merino wool on the batt and felted it. The textured result she showed us she said was a lovely surprise and  she thinks now it will be ideal as a baby’s rug.

Finally, our guest speaker Sue Clay won the raffle this month!

It was a wet and grey morning when we gathered at Craft house on the 6^th of September, but the sight of Mary Ann’s creative baby jackets rapidly lifted our spirits. We felt fortunate to have such a high tutor: student ratio which meant our questions were rapidly dealt with as well as providing an environment to easily get to know each other.  I chose to do this workshop as it provided an excellent opportunity to learn more about making jackets in a very manageable way i.e. a baby jacket might be just that, or it could be a sample for a bigger one. Either way, I thought a baby size jacket would be achievable in a one day workshop and being largely self taught, I was eager to learn from someone with Mary Ann’s experience.

Our first surprise was the size of the template Mary Ann had kindly prepared for us. It seemed enormous and only just fitted on one table! However after a closer inspection of her samples and a demonstration of laying out the jacket we were on the way to being persuaded that this was the size we needed to start with.

One of the tips I found really useful was the way in which Mary Ann prepared pre-felt using a dry felting method. This is such an easy way to build a collection of pre-felts and can be done while you are watching TV at night with no mess.    Mary Anne guided us through the process of building in an overlapped front, and extending the sleeve for a roll back cuff for those that desired it. We all got down to some serious laying out of wool tops on the jacket template for an hour or so, at which point Mary Ann demonstrated a number of different ways to embellish the jacket. Of course we were all dying to get on to this part but some of us needed to finish the background first! By lunch- time we were all felting madly and trying to stave off hunger pangs so we could start to see some shrinkage. The rolling, and massaging continued until we were able to remove the template and cut the front open. At this stage we all still had fairly large jackets that would have fitted two baby Buntings, but there was a general air of satisfaction at the results so far. The embellishments were recognizable and even produced a few surprises such as three-dimensional flowers as the felt and lace shrunk!

We headed home eager to complete the task and delighted with the comprehensive notes and sizing charts Mary Ann had provided. For my part further felting was accomplished by hand, the washing machine and the dryer (I had a deadline). Finally the best measure of a workshop, even if it is after the event, is a completed article. My jacket departed for Melbourne the following Thursday for the grand daughter of a close friend. It’s hard to imagine it could shrink any more so might even survive a washing machine! I’ll have to make another one now to keep as a sample.

The professional presentation of this workshop and generous sharing of her highly developed knowledge of felting made it hard to believe this was Mary Ann’s first workshop. It was great value and if she runs it again I would highly recommend it.

Janice  gave an overview of  the simple pattern to make the cinderella jacket.

We each received a mini me  piece of paper to replicate the cutting method for the jacket.

A DVD is available for purchase on the internet called “Truly Simple Garments” by Maris Herr – the DVD has several examples of patterns that you can make for felted garments.

Next came the array of beautiful  pre (almost) felted fabrics produced by the participants (yes we all did  our homework.)

Using our mini me pattern we cut into the material  and then Janice showed us how to felt the seams so that it looked like the rest of the felt on the jacket.

Over lunch Janice explained all about the difference between Llamas and alpacas.  Llamas are big like horses (not quite) and alpacas are small like sheep.

After lunch we finished our jackets and went home satisfied.

Janice is very inspiring and it was a great workshop.

Thanks Janice from us all.

Although I have been felting for quite a long time, I still learn different things from workshops which help refine your own technique.
I’ve always admired Alison’s work and thought I could gain some inspiration and ideas from her workshop.
So it was with this in mind I attended the nuno workshop in early April.

We began by discussing what was nuno felting. Then Alison gave a quick demonstration of laying fine layers of wool. Finer layers give more drape, but also have greater shrinkage.
She recommended to sketch the design and then work out the best way to proceed. Examples of 4 different ways to construct nuno were shown and we talked about what each one would produce.

The final stage was how to produce a well felted piece.
Next we were given the option to either use 2 different nuno processes in making a scarf, or making some samples to experiment the different nuno techniques.
Of course also needs to be given to colour, symmetry or asymmetry and proportions.
Everyone was busy making decisions, laying, rolling, fulling and chatting for the rest of the day.
What did I learn? I learnt that Alison’s beautiful feltwork does not happen by chance it is well planned and executed in a methodical way.
Thankyou Alison.

For those of us lucky enough to attend Lindy Frayne’s natural dyeing workshop it was a weekend spent experimenting with natural fibres and any plant material which was obtained sustainably. Pots were bubbling away with puffball, stringy bark, eucalyptus, etc. There was even a large pot of pumpkin soup Lindy kindly made bubbling away for our lunch.

We spent day one wrapping up our bundles with all sorts of plant material and preparing fabrics for dye. Copper and aluminium was used to provide the mordant. Bundles were left overnight in the dye pots and when we arrived the next morning it was with great anticipation that bundles were opened.  No-one was disappointed with the results and those who had dyed merino had amazing results and the intention was to make the pieces of merino into a tunic.

The smells were amazing, the lunch was perfect and the end result of the fabrics was incredible. Some participants decided to leave their bundles wrapped up for a few more weeks to get more marked results.

We were well looked after by Lindy with huge pots of lemongrass tea and fresh bread, dips and soup. Looking forward the next one!