One-to-One felting sessions. Make what you want with expert tuition

Moira's lovely sunny studio, complete with spring flowers! 

Felting is such a versatile medium and it has given me the opportunity to work with all sorts of people in all sorts of places. Sometimes I am working with large groups in a school, sometimes I am working in amongst the books in a busy library and others (like this really enjoyable Saturday) I was doing a one-to-one session with Moira in her own garden studio.

Moira is actually a Food Technology teacher but she had decided to give herself a creative treat (that didn’t involve food) and so booked me to spend the afternoon with her.

The garden studio was full of fabrics, yarns and beautiful papers as Moira is someone who loves to work with a wide range of materials, making her own soft furnishings to mixed media cards and her daughter, Laura Hallett is a professional illustrator. 

It was a lovely sunny day and Moira had the kettle on and lots of lovely biscuits too; not that we had a lot of time for tea breaks!

In our three hour session I introduced Moira to the basics of wet felting. 

One way that I like to do this is to actually make an item at the same time; usually in a one-to-one session people want to go away at the end with more than just samples so I have devised sessions where we actually make a selection of felted flower brooches.

These flowers are all made using slightly different methods. 

 a selection of felted flower brooches

To summarise, what we cover in a one-to-one session is:

• Handling the felting wool fibres (usually Merino tops as they are the easiest to work with if you are a beginner).

• ‘Laying out’ the fibres. 

Laying out two layers of wool fibres 

• Wetting, soaping and rubbing.

• Making felt to the pre-felt stage and learning to recognise what stage in the felting process you have reached. 

• Adding textured and decorative yarns and fabrics and felting them in using the wet-felting technique.

Adding sparkly fabrics and interesting yarns to give surface detail 

• Shaping the flowers - solid petal version and daisy petal version.

• Making felted balls 

• Making felted leaves and tendrils.

Moira's solid petal flower brooch

It was also relaxing for me working with Moira. I have to admit that I am someone who loves to fit as much in a day as possible but when working with Moira it was really lovely to be able to feel that I had shared a bit of my felting knowledge plus at the same time soaked up some of the lovely calming vibes from her studio.

This flower made using the wrapped technique. It requires sewing to keep the petals in place but does look very effective. 

Here I am modelling the red and black felted flower brooch that I made on the afternoon that I worked alongside Moira. 

A great felted flower completely made by Moira ... who had never felted before...with felted in sparkly fabrics

If you would like your own one to one felting session with Kirsty from AllSensesArt then don't hesitate to get in touch either by phoning 0773 995 9951
or e mailing kirstyallsensesart@gmail.com