Fun, Felting and Flowers for Tamworth Library Adult Learners Week

Fun is always important to me. I say that my mission is to “Encourage and nurture creativity and imagination in a fun and enthusiastic way”.

Well my bookings with Tamworth library started with fun; actually when I was a participant at a Laughter Workshop at my own library in Lichfield. Luckily for me one of the staff at Tamworth library, was also on the laughter course. So after laughing ourselves healthy we exchanged cards …. And that was the beginning of more mind body and soul (ie felting) activities in her library.

I have had two fantastic experiences working at Tamworth library. Back in October I worked with 91 children during their Environment Day. Not surprisingly we made felted mini-beasts. One of my most popular workshops as it appeals to 3 year olds right through to teenagers!

15th May – 21st May is Adult Learners week so today it was time for adults to have their chance to learn the magic of feltmaking. Adult Learners' Week is the UK's largest and longest running festival of learning.

It was lovely that even this young adult was able to participate. It was the first day of her work experience placement at the library.

As so often happens people still don’t believe that they will actually be making the felt themselves. One lady had brought her pinking shears as she thought she would just be cutting shapes from industrially made felt.

And look at this beautiful flower that she made; so much more than something cut from premade felt fabric.

I feel really passionate about working with all types of people and I especially get a buzz out of hearing one of my workshop participants say, “Well I’m really impressed with myself... I never thought that I could make that!”

In the morning session at Glascote Library I had a group of ladies who meet each week. They usually make cards but today were thoroughly entranced with feltmaking. It wasn’t a surprise to hear it being described as addictive (in felting circles as referred to as “getting the felt bug”).

The lady who made this (sorry I am so bad at names!) is entering it into a local handicrafts competition. So…a winner? Yes I think it may very well be one!

Polly said that this would be on her sun hat straight away. I believe her.

Sue reminded me that I had made her a felted cushion cover 10 years ago! So it was great that she was finally getting involved with felting herself; this is a beauty!

"....think I may have found my "hidden" inner crafter"

In the afternoon I ran the same session at Tamworth library.
The laughter continued.
No time for coffee breaks but within 2 hours everyone had amazing results!

The flowers can be worn on jackets, hats, bags or in your hair. These two bags were decorated by the end of the session.

As I always say there will never be two flowers the same; each person’s is completely unique.

Felting is such a kinesthetic process. Books can be a great learning resource but it is such a good start to start your learning with a hands on activity.

Dianne Wheeler Team Lead: Books, Reading & Learning at Tamworth Library is ordering some new felting books for her stock as she expects these participants to want to move forward using the knowledge picked up during my AllSensesArt Feltmaking Taster session yesterday.

So Adult Learner’s week activities in libraries gets a big thumbs up from me!

Read about other Adult Learners Week activities at Tamworth Library here.

Make your own Hand-Felted Bunny Glove Puppet & Easter Chick to have even more fun this Easter!

Easter is a lovely time to celebrate and definitely a time to let out your creativity.
This cute hand-felted chick was made by my son Dominic.
We really enjoy rolling our Easter Eggs. I grew up in Scotland and so this is a tradition that I have always done. Last year we were visiting my sister in Edinburgh and so went up Arthur’s Seat to roll our eggs.

My sister Sandra got really excited when she realised that we had a little helper with us. Here she is giving Bunny (one of my hand-felted bunny glove puppets) a chance to roll the eggs.

One of the cool things about felting is that you can make a seamless item like a felted handbag, a felted jacket or a glove puppet with absolutely no sewing! Here you can see me laying out the fluffy Merino wool fibres. To make seamless felt you use a resist. This stops the front of the puppet felting to the back of the puppet. I like to use this grey builders’ plastic which I buy from my local builders merchants in Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Here’s Louise and her mum with the felted puppets that they made at one of my workshops at Bilston Craft Gallery last Easter.

There are so many colours of Merino wool fibres. I was pleased that the children didn’t feel that they had to stick to “bunny colours”.
This bright pink felted bunny will have fun hiding chocolate eggs this Easter!

You can see what cute faces the children at the workshop managed to give their hand-made puppets. All these details are made using the wet felting process. That means that by carefully laying out different wool coloured fibres you can "paint" the details; shading for nose and ears and other stripes and patterns.

You can make one of these puppets yourself.
I will be running an Easter Bunny Glove Puppet session

on Thursday 8th April 2010 10.30am-12.30pm
at Walsall Museum, Lichfield Street, Walsall, West Midlands, S1 1TR.
To book phone the museum on 01922 653116

Visit the What's On in Walsall website for more details.

If you can't make it over to Walsall on 8th April you could book your very own Children's Felting Craft Party. Invite some friends to your own house and could come and teach you how to make your own Hand-Felted Easter Bunny Glove Puppet.
£95 for a two hour session for 6 children aged 8 and up. Materials included.

For more information vsit my AllSensesArt Childrens Craft Parties page on my website.

Have fun this Easter. Make your own felted Bunny Glove puppet.
Even make a cute felted chick!

Wow! Felted donuts, coffee cups & saucers made by beginners at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Jann Haworth's exhibition is inspirational.

It’s hard to believe that these splendid donuts, coffee cups and saucers were all made by beginners!

It really is amazing what can be achieved with wool fibres soap, water, rubbing and some creativity.

I was really delighted to be asked to run two Sculptural Feltmaking days at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. These were outreach sessions relating to the exhibition; “POP”. "POP" is a retrospective of acclaimed artist Jann Haworth’s work.

Jann grew up familiar with film sets as her father, Ted Haworth was an Oscar winning Hollywood Art Director. Her sculptures are wonderful a celebration of life, fun, family and friends. She trained as a fine artist and has also illustrated many books but it is her soft sculptures especially which show the influence of her childhood familiarity with film sets.

Her sculptures can be read on several levels and very definitely enjoyed by all ages and types of gallery visitors. (Read a review of the show in The Independent newspaper.)

When I met Jann at the opening night of "POP" she explained how she used to pick up a donut and a coffee as she drove to high school and how donuts have been a recurring theme in her work. I particularly liked her collection of donuts which represented Alice in Wonderland (maybe because I have my own interest in Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll).

Another favourite is her "Art of the 20th Century" donuts which, as the name suggests, represent the different movements in 20th century art.

Wolverhampton Art Gallery is especially proud of “Donuts, Coffee Cups & Comics” a piece that they have in their permanent collection.

"New Donuts…20th Century History of Art with Coffee cup" 2005 by Jann Haworth.
Image from from ArtNet website.

I ran 2 one day sessions on 12th December 2009 and 6th February 2010 and the image above shows the really outstanding results that my very enthusiastic students achieved.
We had a full day of felting.

I made up a thick soap sludge from Oliva olive oil soap for this workshop. It really helps when felting over an object.

Yes there is a china mug trapped inside these fluffy merino wool fibres.

I really enjoy trapping unusual fabrics into the hand made felt. Most people wouldn't advise using shiny metallic fabrics but I really enjoy the lovely textures that are achievable.

This photo shows the dry fibres and fabrics which were to become a saucer for our project.

Ann had a smile on her face all day! She was one of the students on the first workshop. Her husband had booked her on my Sculptural Feltmaking day for her birthday... and her feedback?

"This is the best birthday present that I've ever had!"

We all found that making the donuts was amazingly therapeutic. I think that that may be because it is a comfortable size to work with and also the rythmical rubbing and handling of the round donut shape really is deeply soothing, relaxing, and comforting.

Maybe making handfelted donuts could have a healing effect?
It's definitely good for releasing stress.

Julia's frothy coffee with the perfect accessory; a non fattening and pretty felted donut.

Jo "iced" her donut with a generous amount of mohair knitting yarn. we all agreed that it was the perfect shade of pink and looked incredibly realistic.

Rich, exotic and definitely a celebration of donuts, coffee cups and saucers!

I was so proud of these students!
Ruth had never made felt before. She was planning on giving the cup away as a present but it is such a fantastic first project that I do hope that she keeps it for herself.

The students from the 6th of February 2010 Sculptural Felting workshop.

We felt like celebrating and so posed with coffee cups and donuts by the entrance to "POP" Jann Haworth's retrospective at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Exhibition continues until 10th April 2010.

Felting outreach at Taking Time: Craft & the Slow Revolution

During half term I ran drop-in sessions at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.

This is what Lin Osborne from the gallery said,

"Thankyou to you for making the workshop such a success. It was wonderful to see even very small children really engaged and getting wonderful results that could easily have been produced by adults. I know I was thrilled with the piece I made! During the day we had both quantity and quality and that isn't always possible during drop-in sessions.”

I called the sessions Fantastic Textural Felting and they were designed to tie in with the Taking Time: Craft & the Slow Revolution exhibition.

I happen to love textures and do draw on various tactile memories from my childhood when making my own work www.frillipmoolog.co.uk. I also really enjoy the many textures that can be achieved in the feltmaking process.

The teenager who made this experimented with almosyt all of the materials available in the session. She was excited at the prospect of using this sample as a starting point for more work towards her Art Btec Diploma.

One of the most exciting things about teaching feltmaking is seeing the delight on people’s faces when they realise that they have made something that only minutes before they would never have believed that they could do.

This is especially noticeable in adults, especially adults who have brought children along to a session, and really didn’t expect to be able to have a go themselves.

So many people have left school believing that they aren’t artistic, can’t make things and have no imagination. So I am absolutely delighted when I am able to dispel these damaging myths!

Some artists don’t enjoy workshops as we are often are asked to put together a session where the time allowed is shorter than ideal. I was very lucky at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery last week.

Although billed as a drop-in workshop we ended up having groups of up to 12 people at a time. Each session was about 1 hour long.

This was fantastic as I was able to:

• introduce felting,
  
• explain how to lay out the merino wool fibres
  
• and explain a bit about the process of felting
  
• and the participants had time to make their own unique pieces.

Making felt is ideal for the kinesthetic learner. It is not an exact science. But simply by making a piece, participants can experience and feel the process as it happens.

An orgy of colour and sparkle here.

At the beginning of the session I explained that we were linking into the exhibition Taking Time: Craft & the Slow Revolution.

I joked with the children in the session that we were actually going to be working fast as opposed to slow and that although none of them had made felt before we were going to start straight away with some Advanced Feltmaking.

I said that it was like going straight into year 6 at school!

So what was advanced and how did we link into the concept of Slow?

We talked about recycling and using fabrics that had already had a life: a chiffon blouse, an old piece of sequined sari fabric, old turban cloth, remnants of fabrics from dressmaking projects and even plasterer’s scrim.
We managed to recycle some pre-felt from previous projects. Pre-felt is partially made felt where the wool fibres have not completely felted and will still “accept” new added wool fibres.

We also used some interesting textiles, which although not recycled, were very unusual to incorporate into the felting process. Rubber fabric (the kind laid under rugs to stop them from moving) and also knitted metal and plastic pan scourers were cut up and incorporated with the lovely soft merino wool fibres.

Spot the knitted plastic pan scourers (blue one and a metalic one) felted into this piece

I wished that I had mentioned that waiting for the sheep to grow its fleece could be seen as a slow part of the process.

It was impossible to cover all the possible aspects of the Taking Time: Craft & the Slow Revolution.

Things like:

• Taking Time to think about the aesthetics of what you are making.
• Thinking about the materials that you want to use in it
• Sourcing these materials
• Using sustainable materials from renewable resources

Even though the sessions were only an hour long the results were spectacular and people from 3 year olds to grandparents were all surprised and delighted with their results.

I do believe that they will definitely reflect over their experiences in my AllSensesArt Textural Felting Workshop and that their unique creations will give them pleasure for a LONG time to come.

I have said it before but I know that so many of these hand-made pieces of art made in snatched creative opportunities (including drop-in workshops) are treasured for YEARS to come.

This young felter used only shapes cut from prefelt. She was interested in shape and colour rather than texture.

Excerpts from the exhibition text.
……..The exhibition’s main theme is time and making. Although making takes time it is not necessarily always done at a slow pace………… A consideration of time in the exhibition may go further than first impressions suggest and the pieces on display might ask you to slow down and rethink……….

……..David Gates’ pieces also demand a second look. The furniture at first seems familiar: there are elements we recognize and yet they are different. Consequently we are encouraged to look again and consider where they might belong and why, by slowing down and considering the meaning and life of an object that we so often take for granted………

………Makers may often have a very intense knowledge of the materials that they use. Sonya Clarke makes work which encourages us to ask why it was made. Sonya’s interest in beads goes beyond making with them. She is interested for example in their significance in ancient history and their continued use and relevance in today’s society……..

There is also a blog linked to the exhibition. Look here for artist interviews, curators thoughts and details of outreach activities.

The exhibition runs at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery until 4th January 2010.