On Friday, the 29th, and Saturday, the 30th of May, a dozen volunteers from Feltmakers Ireland generously shared their love of the magic of feltmaking with the public at Bord Bia Bloom, an enormous, five-day festival in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, which focuses on gardening and sustainability.
On the second day, we shared the space with our friends from Fibreshed Ireland. It was great to see them spinning, weaving, dyeing, and sharing insights into the sustainable, local wool and linen textiles of Ireland.
Fibreshed Ireland
Malú Colorín and Frederique KnitsMalú Colorín and Kathy Kirwin
Hands Busy at Work
Hands of guild member Tamzen Lundy, as she creates faux-taxidermy foxes
Our volunteers led children and adults in creating wet-felted balls, 3D flowers, and flat wool paintings. They also demonstrated more complex feltmaking activities.
Tamzen Lundy created several of her 3D faux-taxidermy foxes, and Irina Lampadova showed how to make felted wristlets using a unique template method.
Our Volunteers
TamzenDeidre and SiobhánFionaHélèneHélène and FionaIrinaClaireLoli and LindaLoli and JulianeMarySiobhánTamzen
Many thanks to our members, who donated time from their busy Bank Holiday Weekend to share their love of felting with the visitors at Bloom. In addition to displaying their felted work, many wore felted items.
Many thanks to the DCCI for inviting us to be part of the Irish Craft Village, and to the event organisers, Geraldine and Catherine Gray, who ensured we had what we needed for the event.
Delighted Attendees
Videos
There are two Instagram Reels for each day of Feltmakers Ireland’s participation at the Irish Craft Village:
Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.
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Questions: For questions about content, please follow the link to the organisation involved in hosting the event.
The solo show ‘Living Felt: a Manifesto’ of feltmaker, milliner, and painter Saar Snoek features her explorations of 30 hats, sculptural works in felt, and her World of WearableArt (WOW) piece ‘Wild Things’. She creates her work using a variety of fascinating techniques – many of them felting!
“I made these to forget there is a ‘right way’ to make felt. Everything you don’t know is experimental, everything you know technique” — Saar Snoek
Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.
Contact Us: If you have any concerns about content, please email us at feltmakersie@gmail.com.
Questions: For questions about the content, please follow the link to the organisation hosting the event.
On Friday, the 30th and Saturday, the 31st of May, volunteers from Feltmakers Ireland will demonstrate wet and needlefelting at the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland‘s Irish Craft Village, at Bord Bia Bloom in Phoenix Park. We will be in Demo Area 3, near the Conservation Area. Our book, ‘Exploring Irish Wool for Feltmaking’, will also be for sale, along with some of our members’ works. Come by and say, ‘Hello’!
Feltmakers Ireland guild member Lucia Errity will display her felted work at the MeathMade booth.
More Information
This June bank holiday weekend (Thursday, May 28th– Monday, June 1st, 2026), Bord Bia Bloom, Ireland’s most unique gardening, food, and sustainable living festival, returns for its 20th year.
Filled with colour and creativity, the event heralds the start of summer with a dazzling display of glorious gardens, fabulous food, and enthralling entertainment to entice visitors of all ages.
Spanning a 70-acre site in Dublin’s leafy Phoenix Park, Bord Bia Bloom is one of the country’s largest outdoor experiences, attracting over 100,000 visitors annually. This year, visitors can soak up the sights, sounds, and tastes of summer over five buzzing days packed with live entertainment, talks, interactive workshops, dining, shopping, and so much more.
Bord Bia Bloom offers abundant opportunities to grow, taste, and learn. Tickets are on sale via Ticketmaster, and two children can go free with each adult ticket purchased. Concession tickets are available for senior citizens (66+) and students with a valid ID.
Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.
Contact Us: If you have any concerns about content, please email us at feltmakersie@gmail.com.
Questions: For questions about the content, please follow the link to the organisation hosting the event.
On Sunday, the 1st, and Monday, the 2nd of June, 17 volunteers from Feltmakers Ireland generously shared their love of the magic of feltmaking with the public at Bord Bia Bloom, an enormous, five-day festival in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, which focuses on gardening and sustainability.
Our booth at the DCCI’s Irish Craft Village.
This year, we were in a new-to-us location within the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland‘s (DCCI) Irish Craft Village – in the special Demonstration Area – just like the Irish Woodturners’ Guild. This meant we were in a three-sided booth with more area to display and demonstrate.
After seeing helpful photos of how the Irish Patchwork Society inspiringly shared their craft on Friday, we slightly pivoted and emphasised more hands-on felting opportunities with the public. This proved immensely popular!
Young Hands Busy at Work
Several volunteers patiently guided our visitors in creating their own wet felting snakes, balls, flowers, and pictures! We probably should have counted ALL the young people who got to experience feltmaking. (Next time we will). There were a lot.
The last image of hands shows a charming Sheep Purse that one of our young visitors had made!
What Wool Can Do
Loli showed how needlefelting can be two or three-dimensional. In the foreground are fibre samples from sheep raised in Ireland from our Wool Book – ‘Exploring Irish Wool for Feltmaking’. We had several visitors who either grew up on farms or currently raise sheep, look for their breeds of sheep in our book! The orange-coloured wool was dyed with onion skins, while the blue and green samples were dyed with ‘acid’ dyes.
Our Volunteers
Our members donated time from their Bank Holiday Weekend to share their love of felting with the visitors at Bloom. Along with displaying their felted work, many wore felted items: earrings, brooches, necklaces, headwear, and even a jacket!
Irina and EvijaMarian showed children how to make felted snakes.Siobhan instructingClodagh and Siobhan chatting with visitorsKaren wet felting a flower.Fiona managing the wind from removing her fibres.Denise walked amongst the crowd and talked about the Guild and Feltmaking. In the foreground is Margaret’s suitcase of fibre.Jane demonstrated wet felting and Alison demonstrated needle feltingRamona instructing a young person.Margaret separating roving.Elaine and her ‘flower factory’ of students.Lorna demonstrated how felt can be used to create flowers and Sandra needlefelted a city landscape using a Foxford blanket. as a base.
Many thanks to our volunteers who made our event an inspiring and interactive destination to visit at Bloom: Evija, Irina, Marian, Siobhan, Clodagh, Karen, Fiona, Denise, Jane, Alison, Ramona, Margaret, Elaine, Sandra, and Lorna. Special thanks to Loli and Juliane for organising.
Disclaimer for Feltmakers Ireland Blog
Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.
Contact Us: If you have any concerns about content, please email us at feltmakersie@gmail.com.
Questions: For questions about content, please follow the link to the organisation involved in hosting the event.
Several members of Feltmakers Ireland have upcoming feltmaking classes that may be of interest to our readers. Members’ classes are located throughout Ireland.
Note: If you are a guild member and teach frequently, we can add you to our Resources Page or a future blog post. Please email feltmakersIE@gmail.com to be included.
If you have questions about a particular class, please contact the tutors directly.
Disclaimer for Feltmakers Ireland Blog
Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.
Contact Us: If you have any concerns about content, please email us at feltmakersie@gmail.com.
Questions: For questions about content, please follow the link to the organisation involved in hosting the event.
Artist Sakaya Ono (aka @qqqsayappp ) has a solo show of her wet-felted sculptures and wearable art.
Selected as the only finalist from Japan for the International Art Textile Biennale, her work will tour eight galleries and museums in Australia from January 2023 to spring 2024.
This exhibition runs from Saturday, January 20th – Sun 28th. 12:00 ~ 19:00 (Last day until 17:00)
(She has a YouTube channel with videos which have English captions).
Disclaimer for Feltmakers Ireland Blog
Feltmakers Ireland aims to share information about awards, education, events, exhibitions, and opportunities that you will find interesting. Our sharing is neither paid for by nor an endorsement of these individuals or organisations.
Contact Us: If you have any concerns about content, please email us at feltmakersie@gmail.com.
Questions: For questions about content, please follow the link to the organisation involved in hosting the event.
From Lorna Cady, Feltmakers Ireland member and pharmacist –
As a pharmacist in the 1980s, working at the orthopaedic hospital in London, we often dispensed this wax. It came in foil containers with a cardboard lid [like take-aways] in sizes to accommodate hands [or feet].
For patients with arthritis or other sore, stiff conditions, the wax [in the container] was melted in hot water, and the patient put their hand in it and moved it about gently for several minutes. The heat – which was not hot enough to burn – gave great relief to the painful joints. Apparently, the wax comes off easily after the session.
Sometimes I have heard feltmakers say their hands are a bit sore after a lot of felting work – I remembered about the wax.
In my current job in the nursing homes in Dublin, we don’t dispense ‘sundries’, just medicines, so I hadn’t seen the wax here.
I didn’t want to recommend it to feltmakers without checking that it was still an approved therapy.
This week I met with one of the physiotherapists at work – the wax is still much used – rather than having gone out of favour for whatever reason.
The physio said the wax is melted in a strong polythene bag in hot water, and the hand goes in, as described above. After use, the wax solidifies and can be used again for the same patient.
I have looked at the wax online – there is a lot of information, and different devices like large polythene gloves [cheap] or electric baths [hand-sized] to melt the wax and put the hand in [expensive]. I haven’t found the ‘take-away’ containers yet, but they are probably out there somewhere! There are lots of details on how to use the wax.
Sunday Session November 6th 2022 in the CIE Social Club Inchicore!
On Sunday 6th November Feltmakers Ireland Committee and 25 members took part in a `hands-on` practical Feltmaking session. There was great excitement, as a Nationwide film team was coming to film our efforts and interview some key members of our Feltmakers Ireland community.
The session was led by Tamzen Lundy, a former Committee member. She had designed a really charming Christmas project for us, a felted Nordic style Santa Claus in 3D. You can use the Santa Claus as a tree decoration, as a bottle topper, or as a stand alone ornament.
Feltmaking is a craft that allows you to easily produce items in 3D without any sewing at all. The committee had prepared a kit bag for each participant, containing all we required for this session.
Tamzen then took us all very clearly through the process, which involved laying merino wool in 3 alternate layers on a triangular shaped resist.
For Santa’s face, Tamzen showed us 2 ways of making and attaching a felt nose,(a felt bead, cut in two) by fluffing it up with a wire (or pet) brush, then had an ingenious method of using a small piece of prefelt (sometimes called Needlepunch) to create the face, and then cutting a teeny hole in the prefelt to reveal the nose. Later we would use needle felting to add eyes and beard.
The main learning points I took from Tamzen`s were:
To use no soap in your wetting down process, (and generally very little soap overall) a bit controversial for me as soap tends to be my `comfort blanket`.
No rolling, (not a roller in sight! ), use bubblewrap as a rubbing tool , and generally keep on rubbing, and massaging with your bare hands, or bubblewrap, on the surface of your piece until any sign of `cellulite` is gone! (Of course that meant that a big discussion on what cellulite was, ensued!)
At the end of the very happy and enjoyable session, it was really interesting how all the Santas looked very individual, taking on their own personalities!
While we participants were concentrating on our project, RTE`S Nationwide crew were filming a wonderful and varied display of members’ work at the end of the room. They interviewed Deirdre Crofts from our Committee, who spoke of the different pieces on display and explained the different felting skills.
Founding member of Feltmakers Ireland, Elizabeth Bonnar was interviewed about our Guild’s history in Ireland. Also interviewed was Astrid Tomrop-Hofman another important person who helped bring felt making to Ireland.
Our current research project on Irish breeds of sheep and their fleeces, was explained to Nationwide interviewer Zainab, by the leader of the research group, our Treasurer, Annika Berglund. The group hopes to publish a book in the near future with their findings.
Fiona Leech and Deirdre Croft told of our monthly Sunday Sessions, and of our Annual Art Felt Exhibition.
Zainab, interviewer, had her first go at Feltmaking!
For me, a member for many years, and formerly on committee, it was lovely to see old felting friends, like Helene Dooley, who has been working with the IFA , (the International Feltmakers Association, with which we are affiliated .)
Session leader, Tamzen, was interviewed, as she has turned her feltimaking into a successful business, and has an Etsy shop, Tamzenlundydesigns.
A very big thank you to Breda Fay, our Guild Chairperson, who was the person RTE contacted, and who made the film crew so welcome. Thanks to Lorna Cady, Committee member, who secured our venue, and to all our Committee members who baked tasty goodies, and made tea and coffee for us all, and made us all so welcome.
Clodagh Mac Donagh.
EXHIBITIONS
Our Feltmakers Ireland Annual Exhibition will open on Dec3rd in the Ashtown visitor Centre, in the Phoenix Park and will run for the whole of December
From 12th November until 23rd of December, Tamzen Lundy has an exhibition of her work at the Newbridge Arts Theatre Centre, Riverbank, Co. Kildare.
NEXT SUNDAY SESSION
venue: CIE sports hall, Inchicore
time : 10.15-12.30
Leader: Carmen Draghici, coming specially from Constanza in southern Romania for the weekend. Her work can be viewed online at FELT JOY and on Facebook & You Tube. She has an ETSY shop and she will bring some of her work to show us.
She will demonstrate some of her unique skills, making a small Christmas Cushion (as time is so limited )
It will be practical session. Some kits may be available to purchase (€4) for those who have materials (old towel, soap, bubble wrap etc) needed to felt with Carmen.
Materials needed: (exactly as last session)
Old towel, bubble wrap, resist, soap, and water bottle, needed.
70 grams red roving, embellishments (including, if you have any, old lace or finest crochet)
Virtual Sunday Session – Fiona Duthie, Vessel within a Vessel
By Annika Berglund
Unfortunately, we can not meet in person yet due to Covid but we still want to keep up the contact with members and keep the learning opportunities coming. Feeling connected and having opportunities to develop the craft seems more important now than ever.
We thought we would look outside our group for new learning and we found an excellent tutorial by renowned teacher and artist Fiona Duthie. Fiona Duthie gives online workshops on a regular basis that have a great reputation. Unfortunately, her workshops are all fully booked for 2020. We will keep an eye open for when registration opens for 2021. Luckily for us, she also has a free online tutorial that we want to suggest to you for this month. It is a great introduction to her teaching style and you end up with a lovely little vessel and an interesting technique in felt making.
I had a go at following the tutorial and it was easy enough to understand.
First, I made a template that looks like two circles connected by a “bridge”. Then you have to think a little “inside out” and put the decoration down first on one of the circles as this one will be turned inside out eventually However, you put the decoration on last for the second circle. You rub and roll these together, throw them down a little and then you cut openings in the second circle and pull the template out through these. Finally, you push the first circle through the bridge, into the second circle. This turns the first circle inside out so the decoration becomes visible through the holes in the second circle. Magic!
