Felting

Please, keep in mind these are only samples. If there was one combination of colours in the world and it was orange and brown, I would not use it. Alas, that is the colours of the wool slivers which we were given in our package to work with.

Our tutor was Helen Stumkat, and she was an excellent tutor. She was very generous with her knowledge, sharing all her hints and tips she has gathered over the past 30 years of playing with fibre.

It was a "vigorous" day which saw us rolling and rolling this wool stuff in rolls of netting, rubber drawer liner, bubble wrap and pool cover plastic - I kid you not!

We rolled and rolled and rolled until our wool fibres resembled felt in the making. Then we rubbed it on the pool cover plastic, threw it at the pool cover plastic and treated it very poorly indeed until it succumbed to be FELT.

Oh, we also hit it from time to time (in between rolling) with some hot detergent water. Poor wool fibres, they really copped it.

Helen showed us all sorts of wonderful creations we could use our felting for. She, herself was wearing a very unique hat she had made and a shawl with a felted collar. She revealed that even the very lovely choker necklace had beads which were felted. It looked all the world like beads. Very clever indeed. I was taken with a scarf she had made in the fashion of the square meshy sample I am showing your here. Can just imagine how much time and hard work it was to get a scarf length of this felt, as it took so long just to do this little sample. (Unfortunately, I forgot to take along my camera, but I believe all the participants are receiving a CD of photos of the day, so will blog these when they come to hand).

It makes you appreciate why you see felt pieces for such high prices, it is veeerrry labour intensive.

I can envisage it's use in art quilting and crafting of small objects, and would in the future, like to have a more advanced class with Helen. She indicated she would be willing to conduct such a class.