Fabulous Felt Course

I recently did a Fabulous Felt course run by the Community Learning Partnership.  Our tutor was the lovely Paula Watkins (see the link to her blog below) and it was a wonderful course.

We launched straight into it on the first day where we started by making prefelt.  I have seen prefelt for sale before and didn't really know what it was, so this was a great opportunity to get to know about it.  You basically felt the wool fibres together very slightly, so it holds together but doesn't felt as such.  I made pieces of orange and green.

Lining up the wool fibres to make prefelt

finished prefelt

Then we put the 2 pieces together and felted them and then made them into a flower.  My leaves looked a little droopy to begin with, but as the felt continued, they shrank up a little and looked more leaf-like.  They are still a bit wispy but a bit of stitching will sort that out.

Next we made some felt sausages and made beads out of them.  After all the felting on the draining board and heavy duty pummelling, Paula took pity on me and rolled my felt a little bit to get me on the way to an acceptable sausage.  I really loved how the beads turned out!

We also did a panel.  Most people went for blue sky and grass, or sand, but I went for something reminiscent of Johnny Nice from the Fast Show.  Please see this link:

 You Tube Johnny Nice

Anyway, with all the blues and greens and fluffy clouds, I found purple and dark grey and us crawling towards our doom (watch the link).

But I like it anyway, as it suits the colours in our dining room.  And some very generous people glossed over the [BLACK] dark tones and admired it anyway.  Both the flower and the purple trees need some stitching, so I will put another photo in when I get the chance to do some stitching.  And more crochet as I have been very lax recently and wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't remember how to do a double crochet.

I then made a large panel, which was white and coral and salmon pink (trying to show an artistic diversity after all the BLACK). Again, I'm going to do something with that at a later date, and will post when I have the time.

We learnt needle-felting as well which was really enjoyable.  I have used the Clover Tool before, but was hooked with the single needle, as found it gave so much more potential for detail.  You could add wisps of wool to create a highlight and incredible detail.

Overall, a fantastic course, and I would definitely look at doing another with CLP and Paula!