Crochet and Felt

At last week's Fabulous Felt course one of my learners was our Elizabeth, Director of the Community Learning Partnership. I have been running the course for a few years and she loves to see all the learners work but she has never really had the chance to make any felt herself. She is slightly addicted to wool though; the colours, its softness (its SMELL!!??) and all the amazing things can be made from those lovely wool tops! 

However, Elizabeth's greatest current addiction is Crochet. Whenever I go into the office she has crocheted something new or bought more delicious wool for our learners to use on our crochet courses. So it shouldn't be a surprise that she had been wondering if you could combine crochet with handmade felt.

The answer is, of course, YES!

Felt making is such an amazing adventure that we never stop learning how many different things you can do with it. The wackiest things work if you know the basics of how felt is made  
and you can embed all kinds of things into the fibres as they felt.

So this week, on part 2 of the course, she is going to bring some pieces of crochet to experiment with. In the meantime I had a little experiment of my own.

I found some gorgeous space dyed merino yarn in my stash and crocheted some circles of different kinds and sizes and added them to the bottom of of my seascape panel that I was using to demo felting to the class. As the felting was barely started the crocheted motifs adhered really well to the pre felt and moulded the bottom of the panel with some lovely curves.

I added shells and some stitching to finish it all off. I love adding crochet to felt! Thanks Elizabeth and lets see how our experiments turn out on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to seeing how everyone's felt turns out. It is always wonderful to see beginners turn into Fabulous Felters.

I will post some  photos of the class work next week. 

Handmade Fabulous Felt Course

I have been teaching the Fabulous Handmade Felt course for quite some time now for the wonderful Community Learning Partnership and I am always blown away by the wonderful creations made by my learners. 

They start off as beginners and by the end of the course they are just as addicted as I am to the gorgeous silky soft merino wool fibres and the way that felting blends all the colours together to make a textile that is so strong and so beautiful.  

We always have such a great time making art together. Many of them tell me that they think they are not artistic at all, but I know that all of us have the ability to choose colours that we love and are inspired by things around us that are beautiful so I hope that by the end of the course they have changed their mind about their talents! Here are some photos of some recent work. LOVE it! Some of these are just at the beginning of the process and have just had the fibres laid out the others are the beautiful finished articles. Just  excuse my dreadful photography!

The course will be coming to Boxmoor in Hemel Hempstead soon. Come and make some Fabulous Felt with me!