I hope that you are keeping warm, and are not covered in too much snow.
Last week I was lucky enough to have space at a felt making workshop. It was run by a lovely lady called Jo Polack and was held at the Ecopark, on the north coast of Cornwall.
I always look at different courses and classes and think wow I would like to that one or that one, but never get round to actually booking a place, but this time I thought would actually do one of these brilliant courses that Jo runs.
Come prepared to get wet was what the email read...... we are talking about the middle of winter in Cornwall, getting wet is not something high up on my list of to do things!
Also I was nervous about meeting new people, what sort of people would sign up to a felt making workshop? There were eight of us, a real miss match of people. We were given an introduction to the art of felt making, where it originated from and the type of people that made it. Apparently when they made felt to cover houses it was dragged behind horses to felt the wool, so that it was extremely thick and durable.
As you can see we were set up with our own individual tables, complete with net curtain, bubble wrap, towel, length of dowel and a carrier bag, it felt like being at play school.
We started by selecting our lengths of merino tops,
and then laid them in three layers, one layer horizontally, the next vertically and the final layer horizontal, this was to ensure that when we started agitating the fibres that they would mesh together. Whoever thought that felt making was easy have obviously not tried it. It was like having an aerobics session.
This picture shows our small squares of felt hanging in front of the fire to dry, as you can see we all chose some amazing colours (would be lovely to make a rug of all different squares of brightly coloured felt).
When we had mastered the art of making a small felt square we were allowed to be adventurous and make a wall hanging. I decided to make a hanging of grass, sky and some blue flowers. This was definitely harder than making the small square, but so worth it, to be able to lay out your fibres to make a picture and then by the felting process produce a picture (that was surprisingly recognisable) was amazing.
This was such a fantastic day, it was run on the Sunday as well as the Saturday, but I could only afford one of the days, but I will definitely do another another course with Jo in the future, and I really recommend felt making to anyone.
Thank you for stopping by.
take care xxxxxxxxx
