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!
