Fun Felt workshop in Taranaki

After being asked on several occasions if I tutored in felting I took the plunge and Nov 2nd 2013 saw a small group of women gather at Eltham Presbyterian Campsite all excited to attend my first felting workshop.  The workshop was made very affordable by kind grants from the South Taranaki Creative Communities Fund and the Taranaki Creative Fibre Education Fund, for which we were all extremely grateful. The camp is a great venue as it enables people to stay on site at a very affordable rate. Some people travelled from afar and others were locals, some of whom had never felted before!

So, nestled under Mt Taranaki on a beautiful spring day we began, intending to make scarves and dye them, flower brooches, scarf rings and a tea cosy over the course of the weekend. Retrospectively I was a little ambitious with all those projects, but rather too many than too few I think.

Our first project was a white nuno felt scarf, with gorgeous soft merino on paj scarves, embellished with silk fibres.  We intended to dye these scarves using eco-friendly plant dying techniques. 

Once the scarves were made some were rather more reluctant to dye as they were so beautiful, but they took courage and trusting my enthusiastic exhortations and sorted through leaves, skins, rusty objects and so on and then tightly wrapped and bound them and plunged them into the pots!

Once fully ‘cooked’ they were to be left to ‘mature’ until the following afternoon.

After lunch were demonstrations for a few interesting techniques which the students could use on their tea cosies tomorrow.

Making the Opal Ball projects

The morning saw us sitting together making “Opal Ball” scarf rings and flowers, which was lots of fun and it was amazing how many different flowers you can get from one set of ideas.

Opal Ball flower brooches

Opal Ball scarf rings

By lunch time we were all desperate to open our bundles, so after lunch came the excitement of unwinding and opening our scarves and seeing what prints and patterns had formed.

Everyone was delighted with the outcome and it was hard work to get all back together to move on to the next project. But we got them rinsed, neutralised and hung them out to dry.

Then later we all lined up for the photos 

Al modeling someone who had to leave's scarf

Using a resist we started forming our tea cosies and I must say I was impressed especially with the newbie felters and their commitment to following instructions.  Unfortunately we ran out of time to finish the cosies, but everyone went home with the cosie at a prefelt stage and hopefully they managed to finish the felting, fulling and shaping at home.

a finished tea cosy

Some comments from a couple of people who were not felters but rather were quilters and embroiderers, were that it was so good to do a workshop where they went home with some completed projects, and they were happy to have something to continue working on when they got home.

I have to say I had a ball teaching and I’d love to teach more workshops.

Thanks ladies for such an enjoyable weekend.

Bernice Mitchell, Stratford NZ

to contact Bernice click here

Well here I am, and I was just looking for my sister Jessie's blog page actually. I wonder how I'll find that, even how I'll ever find this page again.
It's an autumn-like summer's day here in Stratford New Zealand, I'm home alone and was wandering the web looking for Lentil Pattie recipes to try for my upcoming Budget Cooking Class.
I'm off to find either the recipe I was searching for or my sister's blog.
bye for now
just changed the time to new zealand time, thank you very much!