ANN'S FELTING PAGE

I had dyed and spun some really beautiful fibres including angora, mohair, silk and some rare breed sheep fleeces. The resulting jumper was worn once, admired greatly and then decided to put it self on a hot machine-wash. From an amply proportioned garment it became a very sturdy SMALL jumper!
Despite howling and gnashing of teeth I found this material interesting and then experimented using industrial pure wool on the knitting machine. I set the machine to 2-colour fairisle and had a very long piece of knitting which I put into the washing machine on a hot wash with soap flakes. What came out of the machine was enough wool material to make a skirt and waistcoat and then there was no stopping me.

Several years later I saw a day course for making felt boots at our local fibre and craft centre. The day consisted of measuring, maths, hard work and wet feet - but I am still wearing my blue/black calf length felt booties in the winter as they are really warm.
The next day course was to make a hat moulded over a large upturned bowl. This does DEFINITELY not get an airing, as it would be better being used as a bowl and not a hat!

These two courses had really fired my imagination and when I heard that our tutor for the day courses, Janice Spritz was going to run a CITY AND GUILDS course in felting then I was almost first in line. As it had been a long time since I was at school and even then found art and design difficult, it was the one part of the course that I was not looking forward to it. I think that most of us on the course (7) found the art side hard, and trying to see something inspirational in ordinary daily objects, was mind blowing.

For the assessment we all had to have design boards or folders showing at least 10 samples of felting using a variety of fibres, one conventional piece of felt and something innovative and loads of written work. My first piece was a large bag with a platted rope handle with part felt flowers that I could see from my workshop. My innovative work was an evening jacket with cobweb felt sleeves, using a rainbow as my inspiration as you can see in the picture.

I can now get down to doing some creative felt such as babies felt booties with crochet tops, nuno felt scarves with silk paper inlayed and whatever takes my fancy.