Michigan and Kentucky workshop updates plus a beginners and improvers day at Duckett’s Grove next Saturday!

I’ve been so mentally tired after my exciting days at the Gaelscoil working with the pupils on our large felt wall hanging that I have to admit I’d totally forgotten to post full details about my upcoming MI and KY workshops here on the blog, stupid. In fact I thought that I’d already done so, even stupider!!! I’m so excited about my whole trip back to the US, I actually think that I get more and more excited each visit as I just LOVE spending time with such great friends, facilitating the workshops and meeting new fibre fanatics just adds to the excitement! The workshop page is now updated to include the full ‘Wrapped in Nature’ description for both the MI and KY workshops, links to my Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival classes (I need to alter a couple of details plus my bio via the organisers but the basics are correct!) and information about next weekends flat felting and bag making session at Duckett’s Grove. This coming week I promise to tie down the full details about my Loomis workshops at The Tin Thimble (watch out Emma and Sharon!) but in this post today I’m going to concentrate on both my regular MI and KY venues.

I’m thrilled to be returning to both Plainwell and Lexington and want to say thanks a million times to the fabulous Dawn Edwards and Jan Durham for being such good friends and wonderful hosts!!! I’m so looking forward to catching up with returning participants and meeting new felters in MI and KY, one of the biggest joys of these trips is the opportunity to meet and make friends with blog readers and Facebook buddies, it’s just amazing how the internet allows us connect in the first place. This will be the first time that I facilitate my new workshop ‘Wrapped in Nature – beautiful felt inspired by the natural landscape’. It’s hard for me to express how inspiring it is to live surrounded by the beauty of the rural Irish landscape, I only have to look outside my windows at Clasheen to find my fingers itching to create and when I travel overseas my senses just seem to go on full-time overload!!!

Inspiring views above Berea!

It’s actually been very difficult this year to confine myself to short workshop descriptions, I don’t want to miss a technique out that participants may want to try but on the other hand I don’t want the descriptions to be so vague that no one knows what I’m talking about either! I think that maybe the best thing to do is post the full workshop description here as well as on the workshop page and then I’m happy to answer any questions about individual projects if you’d like to send them my way via email.

‘Wrapped in Nature’ – beautiful felt inspired by the natural landscape

Skill Level: Basic felting skills an advantage
Age Level: Adult although younger students welcome by arrangement

Class Description: During this two-day workshop participants will design and create their own unique and beautiful wearable, functional or decorative piece of felt using the natural landscape as a starting point. Some participants may choose to felt a purely decorative art piece such as a large vessel, sculpture or wall hanging while others may take the opportunity to work on a nuno felt wrap, vest, complex bag or jewellery.

Over the course of the two days there will be time to explore and discover techniques or materials that you may have never considered using in your felting before. Nicola will share with participants how she has been experimenting with natural printing on silk, felt and occasionally prefelt over the last year. This simple dyeing/printing process uses a selection of readily acquired onion skins, leaves (especially eucalyptus), tea leaves and rusty metal, wonderful patterns and colours may be achieved on fabric. Nicola has also been experimenting with using open-topped resists for vessel making and some of her bags since participating in a masterclass with Dagmar Binder last summer. The finish is very smooth on the open edges and this method opens up the possibilities for creating different shapes much easily than with the more often used closed resist method. Another technique that may be relatively new to participants is the tumble dryer method of nuno felting. This technique is wonderful for difficult to felt fabrics and eliminates all the traditional rubbing and rolling, it’s not for everyone but it is fantastic to speed up the process especially if you have a bad back or other health issues! We won’t have access to a tumble dryer at the venue but if participants would like to try this technique they are free to lay out a large nuno wrap during day one and get it to the stage where they can bring it home with them and finish it using their own dryer that evening. Nicola will clearly explain the steps to take and it should be possible to full the pieces and have them finished to show off on day two.

Participants are encouraged to bring along treasured bits and bobs from their stash, buttons, beads, scraps of vintage fabric, shells, stones, glass nuggets etc., these all make wonderful inclusions in felt and help to personalize and create a truly unique work of art!

 NB: Participants who are not able to attend on both days may possibly book one day by prior arrangement although the projects they complete will not be as large or complex as those created over both days of the workshop.

 

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Flower bolos, fun, funky and versatile!

I've just completed the cords for 4 flower bolos this morning as I want to bring them with me to Borris Food and Craft Market in the morning. Here's a picture of one way to wear them, head on over to Clasheen on FB to see two more ways to accessorise an outfit!

I'm just going to grab a quick lunch then into the studio to gather my things for the morning.

 

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My pine needle scarf and some more natural printing/dyeing

I had a lovely day yesterday learning Leiko Uchi’s pine needle technique. My biggest worry was that I would find laying out the ‘needles’ difficult and time consuming, instead, while they did take a lot of time in preparation the task was neither boring nor frustrating at all!

My finished pine needle scarf!

Seeing all Leiko’s beautiful samples spurred me on and I was thrilled by the end of the day with my beautiful, soft and ultra flexible scarf. It was also fascinating working with materials I don’t often carry in stock, gorgeous gold coloured 50/50 silk/ultrafine merino tops, a rich green 40/60 blend and a dark green plain merino for the body of the scarf. Leiko dyed all these fibres herself and I loved the sympathetic way the colours all blended together. The piece was laid out measuring 2.70m (a tad under 9 feet) and ended up after felting at 1.6m (just over 5 feet), a lot of shrinkage!!! Because I laid a very fine gold line around the edge of one side and two different ends for interest, this scarf may be worn in loads of ways! Check out my new facebook album for more pictures and the details.

It was a little breezy this morning taking pictures but a few people were asking for pictures of the silk I printed and dyed last week. Here are just two pictures, a rolled edge chiffon scarf that will be left as is and a length of ponge silk which I’m going to nuno felt later in the week, both were dyed using a selection of eucalyptus leaves, onion skins and rusty metal.

Rolled edge silk chiffon scarf printed and dyed using eucalyptus leaves, onion skins and rusty metal

Ponge silk printed and dyed using eucalyptus leaves, onion skins and rusty metal

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Exciting news – Leiko and I are organising a joint felting retreat at Clasheen!

Now that wonderful Japanese felter Leiko Uchiyama has moved next door we’ve started planning a series of workshops to deliver together designed to compliment our individual strengths. Our first three day felting retreat will take place at Clasheen from Tuesday 13th to Thursday 15th November inclusive and this will be the first time in Ireland that Leiko is offering a full workshop to learn her ‘pine needle’ technique! She’ll be teaching this on Tuesday (and Wednesday morning/afternoon for larger projects), I’ll be concentrating on naturally printing/dyeing on Wednesday then felting large nuno wearables and household textiles using the tumble dryer on Thursday, fine felt without fabric or cobweb felt is also an option with this method. The emphasis on all three days will be learning new skills, creating beautifully felted and finished pieces inspired by nature and having fun in a relaxed, peaceful, rural setting. Simple, tasty home cooking will be the order of the day and shared rooms are on site in comfortable farmhouse accommodation! A maximum of 5 residential places are available for the retreat but we will also be able to accommodate a few additional participants for the printing/dyeing day on Wednesday. I’ll post the prices etc. over the next day or two, stupidly I left them at home and I’m now in Duckett’s Grove and felting here for the rest of the day.

I’ll leave you with an image of a simple necklace I made this morning. I liked this tiger wire fitting which I bought last year in CA so now need to research the best place to buy these at a competitive price in Ireland.

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Felting retreat pictures and beyond!

Wow, I enjoyed an amazing few days at Clasheen during the felting retreat last week, it was even better fun than I had imagined and we had such an inspirational sharing of ideas and techniques.

Merridee with her amazing raw fleece bag

Everything came together in an organic kind of way, US friends Merridee and Keith arrived on Monday, Michelle drove down from Donegal on Tuesday, unfortunately Maya wasn’t able to make it at the last minute (check out her amazing first nuno project which she felted at Duckett’s Grove on Saturday instead!) but Japanese friend Leiko arrived back in Ireland just in time to join us and Carmen called over a couple of times just to say hi and check out what we were making! I don’t have enough hours in the day to go over everything that we were doing but at the start of the retreat I checked which techniques both Merridee and Michelle especially wanted to experiment with and made sure that they were happy with what they had achieved at the end of our time together.

Michelle’s wonderful first nuno felt scarf!

Keith proved a wonderful chef as always, gorgeous cuisine and wine plus HOME MADE yeast bread in the evenings, bliss!!! On Friday morning Leiko helped me set up at Borris Food and Craft Market then everyone else arrived and we headed off to Cushendale Woollen Mill. Our arrival coincided with Suzanna Crampton plus sister and friends delivering Zwartbles fleece so again everything worked out beautifully as Merridee, Keith and Michelle were able to join them as Philip gave everyone a proper tour of the mill in action. It’s obviously not going to be possible to upload all the pictures we took over the course of the retreat to the blog, I will be adding more though to both my personal facebook page and Nicola Brown – Clasheen, do check there over the course of the next few days and hopefully there’ll be loads to whet your appetite! Thanks Merridee, Keith, Michelle and Leiko for being such good fun and relaxing company to have around, you were all wonderful!!! I’ll leave you with a picture I love, all of us together at Borris on Friday morning.

Leiko, Keith, Merridee, me and Michelle at Borris Food and Craft Market

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Marie’s wonderful bag is finished and our relaxing creative retreat is underway!

Briefly…..

Marie’s wonderful felt bag with integrated handle and flap is finished, here’s a photo prior to beading! I love the shape of it and the fact that she made the handle extra long so that it would sit comfortably across her body as opposed to hanging with all the weight (pretty light anyway) resting on one shoulder.

Marie’s beautiful bag

We’re now about to start the second full day of our felting retreat at Clasheen. These last couple of days have been filled with fun, friends, felt and food not to mention a glass or two of wine to accompany Keith’s wonderful cooking in the evenings!!! We may not have truly Portugese style weather here in misty Ireland however the sun finally decided to show a brief appearance yesterday and I believe the forecast is great for today. To date we’ve mordanted a variety of silk and cotton with either vinegar or washing soda and created eco bundles some of which we opened yesterday. Today we’ll be opening more to check how an extra day immersed in the now rusty coloured liquid that they were simmered in will have affected the results.

Dock leaf and tea leaves bundled around a rusty pin

Aside from the eco bundling everyone has been working on a variety of individual projects, I’m trying to post a few pics each night to facebook so do head over to Nicola Brown – Clasheen and my personal page to check them out. Today I hope to finish laying out and felt a nuno shift/jumper that uses some of the cotton gauze I dyed under the watchful eye of Jan Durham in KY earlier this year. It took forever yesterday to calculate the template and get my fabric cut to shape (thanks Dagmar for all your tuition in the template department at Big Cat Studios!) but now I’m underway I don’t think that the actual felting will take too long. I’m going to sign off now as I have a big more computer work to get out of the way then back downstairs before everyone else arrives to start another day of action!

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Relax, unwind and recharge your felting mojo!

FELTING RETREAT AT CLASHEEN

Relax, unwind and recharge your felting mojo!

Come and join me at Clasheen from 7^th – 10^th August for a fun filled felting extravaganza. This recession busting mid-week break is the ideal opportunity to tackle new projects or work towards perfecting techniques in a fun and creative atmosphere. The emphasis during the retreat will be on participants having fun, extending their felting practice and sharing techniques, for those wanting a structured experience I will demonstrate and share my method of incorporating raw fleece into bags and rugs as well as share how I use the tumble dryer to felt larger nuno projects. I will be on hand to guide and answer any questions for the less experienced felter; I’ll also be felting myself and am really looking forward to working on a new jumper/dress idea! Participants are free to use my studio from early morning until 11pm and there’s a wealth of interesting plant material and old rusty bits of iron around for anyone wanting to try out a little bit of eco bundling or rust dyeing!

The total fee for this residential retreat is E220 incl comfortable shared accommodation on site, DIY breakfast and lunch (from a well stocked kitchen) plus a catered evening meal with wine to help us unwind in the evenings, vegetarians are welcome!

Felting equipment and materials are not included in the fee but I will have a good selection of short fibred merino, silk, raw fleece and other natural undyed wool available for participants to purchase for individual projects as well as bubble wrap and laminate floor underlay available by the metre.

This retreat is suitable for participants with all levels of felting experience, the emphasis for the retreat will be fun, fibre, felt, food and friends!

TIMETABLE

Tuesday 7^{th –} Participants arrive from 11 am to check into the accommodation, welcome snack at 12.30, felting starts at 2pm and continues until 6pm, dinner at 7pm, felting until late if desired

Wednesday 8^th and Thursday 9^th – Felting officially starts at 10pm and continues until 5pm, dinner at 6.30pm, felting until late if desired

Friday 10^th Check out is by 10am – Borris Country Market takes place on Friday morning and Cushendale Woollen Mill is just 6 miles away at Graiguenamanagh, this is a wonderful spot to visit, gorgeous locally produced and dyed yarns as well as weaving!

Please email me asap if you would like to reserve a place, confirmation of booking will be on receipt of the full fee via PayPal or cheque.

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U.S. workshop updates plus pictures of nuno felt from yesterday

I’m SO EXCITED that my spring trip to KY and MI is really starting to take shape!!! It’s taken quite a while to get a materials list together for the sessions organised in Plainwell MI by Dawn Edwards (25th and 26th May) and in Lexington KY by Jan Durham (11th and 12th May) because with the title ‘Fantastic Felt Inspired by the Natural and Built Environment’ participants are free to decide during the course of the workshop what direction they would like to explore, vessels, bags, sculpture, nuno felt, wall hangings, the list goes on. In a way I’ll be acting like a conduit for ideas, help and inspiration, the one constant is that the starting point and the theme will be the same for everyone. As a result it’s been a lot more difficult for me to write out a definitive list of what participants should bring with them, however I hope that the guideline below will be of some help for people with specific projects in mind and if anyone has a particular question that they would like me to answer personally please just email me and fire away!!! My workshops at the Kentucky Sheep and Fibre Festival have also gone live on the festival’s website so head on over there if you would like to join us on either the 18th, 19th or 20th of May! Now for the details for Plainwell and Lexington……

• Small vessels, sculptures and bags will need 80 – 150g of fibre.

• Larger and more complex vessels, sculptures and bags will need 200 – 350g fibre, for bags I like this to be divided into 2/3 merino and 1/3 a strong coarser fibre such as C1 or Icelandic wool.

• A simple textured nuno scarf will need either a pre rolled silk chiffon or ponge silk scarf as a base, a long length of silk cut from a roll or alternatively a cotton cheesecloth or muslin length, the longer the better in all cases!  This project won’t need anything like a big amount of fibre but at a rough guide anything between 40 – 60g will be fine for a highly textured end result!

• A large textured nuno wrap/bolero (two day project!) will need 2 – 3 m (yards is fine) silk chiffon, ponge silk, cheesecloth or muslin for the base and at least 40 – 100g good quality merino depending on size.

• A large collaged nuno wrap, wall hanging or yardage for clothing (this may be made using the tumbler method and if so requires no rolling!) will need a piece of base fabric approx 35 to 40% bigger than the desired finished size. I like to use muslin, cheese cloth or my favourite cotton gauze for this but you can use silk chiffon or ponge silk too! In addition to this base fabric you need at least the same volume of fabric in a selection of colours and mixture of weights and texture, i.e. if your base fabric measures 180cm X 40cm you need about 2m X 50cm fabric comprising a mixture of silks, cottons and/or some metallic mesh plus at least 200g good quality merino (for wearables) or alpaca/other fibre for a wall hanging.

• A large table runner will need less fabric than the large collaged nuno wrap above but a higher percentage of wool to fabric, this it to make sure that the runner will actually protect the table from heat or water and is not just decorative, decorative’s OK too if that’s what participants want!

As you can imagine different projects require different techniques and heaviness of hand when laying out the fibre. For wearables I usually but not exclusively use merino with some surface silk/banana/tencel/firestar fibre so I would just encourage particiapnts to sort through their stash and we’ll work together with whatever they bring. The figures above are a minimum guideline, I don’t want anyone to feel pressurised to buy more fabric or fibre than they may realistically need but to be honest where felting is concerned, can one ever have enough fibre or raw materials??? Each participant will also need to bring their usual felting equipment to the workshop. This may include bubble wrap, towels (please bring a few!), hard olive oil/goats milk/glycerine soap, sprinkler, bamboo blind, pool noodle, net, whatever they like to work with themselves, people wishing to try the tumble dryer method need to bring an additional lightweight roll of builders plastic to use instead of bubble wrap.  Anyone felting a bag, vessel or any sort of three dimensional project will need some flexible plastic to use as a template/resist, I prefer 2 or 3mm laminate floor underlay but in an emergency we can use bubble wrap or whatever flexible plastic you have to hand.  NB I love working with batts but roving and tops are perfect too, bring whatever you have and like to work with yourself.  I will also be bringing loads of embellishing goodies with me for everyone to share!

Now for some pictures and chat about the pieces I was nuno felting yesterday.

Texture from Heather's hand spun yarn

Those of you following me on Facebook (click both links on the sidebar to the right if you’ve not already done so!) may have seen the image I uploaded yesterday morning showing some chocolate merino, gauze and beautiful hand spun yarn from my great buddy Heather which I gathered together and was in the process of felting into a simple nuno scarf. This is one of the projects I’ve been completing for the new book with Chrissie, basically it’s an easy first piece for anyone to try using the tumble dryer method. The image here shows how this particular hand spun felted beautifully to the surface of the gauze, I love the texture and colour of it on the surface of this scarf, it’s well felted together but you still have amazing texture from the slubby yarn! Pictures of the completed scarf will be revealed when the book is finished, hopefully not too long because I’m working on it every day now and hope it will be finished before Dawn arrives for her holiday and workshops here at Clasheen in April!!!

The other scarf that I felted yesterday (I also started some felt landscapes) is an even simpler piece, one fine open layer of short fibre merino on top of a long piece of ponge silk. I also added a lot of hand dyed silk fibre on top of the merino, I like the way this scarf can be reversible and only wish that it had been less windy when I was trying to take pictures of it this morning!

Plenty of silk fibre on the reverse

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Turquoise, chocolate and copper or gold

For the first time yesterday I felted a wrap in a ‘new to me’ colour combination, turquoise, chocolate and copper. Today I felted a larger wrap using some of the same fabrics but adding a few small pieces of gold metallic mesh too. Unfortunately the light was very strong today and it was difficult to get good pictures, time was against me too as I’m still trying to gather stuff for my trip to Bulgaria but here are a couple of photos just to give you an idea of what they turned out like!

Ponge silk, hand dyed silk chiffon, cotton gauze and bronze fabric

Two chocolate, turquoise and bronze and/or gold wraps

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Pictures from today’s felting workshop at Clasheen!

Today’s beginner and improvers workshop at Clasheen actually turned into a private lesson as the other participants all had to reschedule due to illness and unforseen circumstances, it’s often difficult trying to organise classes in Ireland, ironic but true! Anyway, I’ll be teaching the same workshop again in two to three weeks as soon as everyone is able to come together, today Jenny came and benefitted from the individual attention!

Jenny with her first piece of felt

Once we had discussed the basics of felting and examined some of my favourite raw materials Jenny laid out her first piece of flat felt, a lovely undyed white merino background with distressed mohair off cuts, silk fibre and some threads of unraveled banana fibre knitting for surface decoration. While Jenny worked on rubbing and rolling I was able to lay out another nuno wrap (obviously keeping an eye out and helping if necessary!), this time in a colour combination new to me, turquoise, chocolate and highlights of metallic copper fabric, pictures tomorrow when it’s dry. By lunchtime Jenny’s first piece was finished and her second was laid out, it’s always so rewarding to watch newbies amazement as the fluffy fibre becomes strong, flexible and stable felt! For her second piece Jenny chose to felt a large needle cover (knitting is her business, HotHead the name!), there were three layers of colour separated by resists on the flap, this worked out beautifully!!! Now she’s all ready for the hat workshop here in April with the wonderful Dawn Edwards, if you’d like to join us for that there are still a couple of places available on Sunday 22nd so please email me asap!

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