Friday 9 March 2018

Coming up in April

Next month Grassington Embroiderers' Guild welcome Nikki Parmenter, who will give a talk on “Experimental Textiles”

Nikki is a Cheshire based artist who specialises in mixed media textile based pieces. She takes her inspiration from a variety of sources particularly in the way in which ancient societies created a series of visual symbols to represent the things which were important to them.  
www.nikkiparmenterartworks.com

We welcome visitors and new members.

March's Meeting: "Felting for Easter" with Sue Amphlett



Having been cut off for days in the Dales with snow drifts and ice, I was really looking to forward to our March workshop.

This month we had arranged for Sue Amphlett to visit Grassington Embroiderers' Guild to give a “Felting for Easter” session. Sue is the owner of Cottontail Crafts Shop in Settle, www.cottontailcrafts.co.uk. The shop is a paradise for crafters and stuffed with knitting wool, fabrics, haberdashery, embroidery, card making, cross stitch, tapestry, crochet, felting and craft books. A real Aladdin’s Cave and well worth a visit.

Sue makes regular appearances as a demonstrator of a variety of crafting products on Hochanda TV. She also gives demonstrations at exhibitions, shows and stores such as John Lewis.

I think I can safely say that today we have all enjoyed a wonderful, creative and stimulating few hours under Sue’s expert tuition.

Sue arrived with all the equipment needed for the workshop (felting needles, wool tops of every colour and shade and flower embellishments), samples to inspire us and printed instructions.

Our goal was to needle felt an Easter design in raw carded wool around a polystyrene egg using special barbed needles. By layering wool around the egg and jabbing hundreds of times, if not thousands, the wool begins to felt a base layer to design on. The action of “stabbing” the fibres with the needles causes the barbs to entangle the fibres, felting them together. I used a multi needle to felt the base layer. This had a protective cap which pressed in on each jab. Five needles were being used simultaneously and made the job much quicker!



Others used three needles but without a protective cap



Ladies hard at work
Changing to a single needle, wondrous fluffs of wool were slowly transformed into intricate designs onto the base layer.


A selection of works in progress
Contrasting with the wonderful fluffs of wool that just kept on growing!




Each piece of work started with the same white polystyrene egg, yet the completed pieces of work were so different and individual.

Thank you Sue for inspiring me to continue experimenting with felting and I am sure others will too.