The International Feltmakers Association’s online Colour Course is now open for enrollment. Coursework access begins on January 2nd and ends on February 28th, 2025. In addition, four other classes are available that run during the same time: Basics, Surface & Edge, 3D Forms, and Nuno Felting.
“DF2 | Colour gives you the skills to blend your own hues, tints and shades of wool. Learn essential colour theory through hand carding and make felt shade swatches for future reference. Explore soft and firm prefelt effects by creating inlay and mosaic design samples. A truly practical course on understanding colour, DF2 is highly recommended for beginners and professionals.”
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.
The International Feltmakers Association (IFA) offers a series of five different online felting classes. These Discovering Feltmaking Courses begin in October and include Basics, Color, Surfaces & Edges, 3D Forms, and Nuno Felting.
You can work at your own pace with qualified mentors giving advice daily.
The classes are open to IFA members and non-members.
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.
Many of our Feltmakers Ireland’s members use wool to create beautiful felted creations, while some express their creativity through additional mediums. The talent within our community continues to shine, as evidenced by two of our members who recently authored articles that were successfully published.
Guild member Jane Fox went on a trip of a lifetime – a Felt and Culture Retreat in Kyrgyzstan for thirteen days. Included in her trip were eight feltmaking and textile workshops, along with cultural and natural highlights.
Over the summer, guild member Hélène Dooley had two articles published.
Her first article concerns her thought-provoking experience of using treasured textile materials to create new artworks. If you have a ‘stash’ of fibres and fabrics that you are ‘saving’, this article may inspire you! The article is published on the ‘Felting and Fiber Studio Blog’.– https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2024/08/17/rethinking-old-sayings/
This photo comes from the Felting and Fiber Studio website.
Hélène’s second article, featured on the Ashford Handicrafts’ blog, is a valuable resource for anyone interested in feltmaking. It’s a detailed, step-by-step tutorial that shares her experiences as a feltmaking tutor and guides readers through the process of creating a wet felted, Frilled Vessel. https://www.ashford.co.nz/felted-frilled-vessel/
Let’s give these two members, Jane and Hélène, a round of applause for learning, creating, and sharing their unique experiences with the world. We couldn’t be prouder of their achievements!
If you, as a member of Feltmakers Ireland, have a textile-related award, exhibition, or experience that you’re proud of and want to share, we encourage you to do so. Your unique experiences and achievements make our community so vibrant and inspiring.
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.
The International Feltmakers Association (IFA) offers online workshops through the Discovering Feltmaking series, designed to help feltmakers, both new and experienced, understand the process of making wet felt.
Part 1- Discovering Feltmaking
Part 2 – Using Colour
Part 3 – Surfaces and Edges
Part 4 – 3D Felt
Each course focuses on a different aspect of feltmaking and gives ample opportunity for practice and experimentation.
For example, if you want to learn about colour mixing, surface design, getting exciting edges, 3D felting, and shrinkage rates for different breeds? All these topics, plus much more, are covered in the courses.
Each course pays particular attention to the quality of the finished felt. All are fully supported by mentors, who check in twice daily with the students to offer advice and encouragement. The courses also offer great value for money, and you will have unlimited access to the material.
Feltmakers Ireland guild member Hélène Dooley will assist with Parts 2 and 3.
Member Annika Berglund shared her felting journey at Feltmakers Ireland’s most recent Sunday Session on the 8th of October.
Online Education
As mentioned previously, Annika started her felting journey with an in-person class at the 2019 Knitting and Stitching show. However, most of her textile learning experiences have been via online study. To read about her recent experience with the Hungarian Felting Retreat, visit this previous blogpost. This is a recap of her online education. Jump to the list ofonline classes.
How Information is Accessed
Annika explained how online classes are ‘delivered’, with many of the best ones being held on the Ruzuku platform, where new topics or projects are introduced weekly or bi-weekly. Depending upon the instructor, these classes can contain short videos, photographs, and step-by-step written instructions. This method helps to break down information into bite-sized pieces. Other tutors share their teaching via recordings of longer Zoom sessions. Typically, these classes are private links on YouTube. The drawback of this method is that students may need to fast-forward through a video to search for needed steps within the instructions.
Depending upon the teacher, classes can be for a few hours or for several weeks.
In some of the courses, students can upload photographs of their felted assignments. Seeing the work, the teacher and the other students in the class can offer feedback. Other students’ comments were an aspect that Annika appreciated through the isolation of 2020. Annika says, “When you did a course, {it} saved my sanity”.
Additionally, being a part of the worldwide felting community was a benefit of some of the courses. Lastly, courses offer one the opportunity to play!
Pam de Groot
The first online class that Annika took was taught by Pam de Groot, an Australian feltmaker.
Pam offers two online courses. Annika greatly enjoyed ‘Surface, Form and Space’. It focuses on different types of differential shrinkage with each assignment. Pam’s other class, ‘Textures and Dimensions’, is more project-based, with multiple techniques in each project. Students create three three-dimensional sculptures: The Splash, The Spiral, and the Twistie. Annika’s Spiral project is the large white ‘seashell’ in the photograph below. While the teal-coloured, star-fish shape is from Pam’s other class.
A medley of felted objects from Annika’s two Pam de Groot classes.
In May, at the AGM, guild member Ramona Farrelly won a bursary to attend a workshop of her choice. She chose Pam’s first class. You can read about Ramona’s experience on our blog.
Fiona Duthie
The next bunch of classes that Annika took were taught by the Canadian feltmaker Fiona Duthie. Fiona’s classes are so popular that they fill up. Hence, Annika could only get a spot in the ‘Over the Edge’ class. However, this eight-week class proved to be quite useful. As Annika says, it “was actually a really good one to do, because {there are} a lot of techniques in the one course and because of all these different ways to edge work, will teach you a lot of different felting techniques that you can use in the middle as well.”
The next class that Annika took with Fiona Duthie was her ‘Raised Surfaces’ class. She found this class highly rewarding. She explained, “Once you start to attach things to the surface, you get much more lively stuff. And once you can do this, … then you can make a hat, or you can make a wall piece. So consider the techniques on their own, and then figure out how they fit with what you want to make…”
Another class that Annika took with Fiona was the ‘Fibre + Paper’ course. This class required gentle feltmaking, with students trying to coax wool through various types of fine papers, including mulberry. However, one of the benefits of working with paper is that it allows crisp mark-making. It also makes the felt stiffer so you can do more sculptural shaping. {In the past, Fiona has offered a related course where students learned how to create paper lampshades.}
Annika also took Fiona’s ‘Surface Design Online Class’, which focussed on texture on flat surfaces. Note how Annika’s careful recordkeeping on her samples.
A Free Fiona Class
If students want to experience a Fiona Duthie class before first purchasing one, there is always her free online tutorial for a ‘Vessel with a Vessel’. This tutorial inspired the guild’s ‘Basic & Beyond’ class, which Annika taught at the beginning of 2023.
Mandy Nash
In this class with Mandy Nash, students learned how to make two felted fish during a live seven-hour Zoom workshop, which is now available as a recorded class. Mandy is UK-based and currently the president of the International Feltmakers Association. In 2022, she taught an in-person felted bag workshop to the Guild.
Eva Camacho
Annika particularly enjoyed learning from tutor Eva Camacho, a US-based feltmaker who is originally from Spain. Annika shared pieces from two of Eva’s classes. In one class, students used the Korean technique of ‘Joomchi’ to make projects out of mulberry bark. Annika explained, “Basically, Korean peasants couldn’t afford fabric, so they took mulberry paper and layered it.” The results were used for clothing and purses. The process is similar to feltmaking! She also took another class with Eva where students focussed on embroidering Joomchi.
Kristy Kun
Kristy Kun is a US-based feltmaker who includes the supplies in the cost of her courses. As Kristy mails the supplies, Annika advises to keep this in mind when enrolling as there can be delays due to international mail. In these classes, Annika learned how to combine thick prefelt with thin cheesecloth fabric. She further explained the types of cheesecloth: it comes in a range of 90 to 10, with 90 being the densest. The loosest weave that she can find in Ireland is grade 50. She added that you can use cheesecloth for Nuno felting; it doesn’t need to be expensive silk fabric.
HERE is an article about the different grades of cheesecloth.
Molly Williams
Annika learned about sculpting a woollen figure around a metal armature in UK-based Molly Williams‘ class. Annika shared how the metal goes through the base, which she made from ceramics.
The Felting and Fiber Studio
The Felting and FIber Studio is an international collective of felt and fibre artists with an active blog (which frequently includes needle felting). They also have a selection of online classes.
In ‘Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Lamination’, Annika learned how to use an acrylic medium to ‘print’ onto fabric. She was especially interested in the textures the acrylic medium created.
Gladys Paulus
Dutch-Indonesian and based in the UK, Gladys Paulus only teaches in person a few times a year, and these classes fill up quickly. Annika is on the waiting list for a class that is next year. In the meantime, she took two classes with Gladys. Her first class was ‘The Lotus’, and the second was ‘Horns’ – where students made a straight and a curved one.
Annika highly recommends Gladys, “Well, she teaches you good felting. Where you can see the difference when you haven’t quite felted it enough, and when you felted it enough, that it takes shapes.”
Some of the above teachers sell their finished products, supplies, and online workshops via their websites. Other tutors may need to be contacted directly for further information. Some of the teachers who teach online have recorded classes that are available year-round, while others have ones with specific availability. Several of the tutors teach additional classes which are not included below. Visit the links to be inspired and learn!
Links are grouped and in the approximate order of when mentioned during Annika’s presentation.
Classes that Annika took in person as part of Felting Camp
If you have experienced other online felting-related courses that you have enjoyed, let us know. We will collect this information for a future post. – feltmakersIE@gmail.com
The International Feltmakers Association (IFA) has a series of online wet felting workshops: Part 1- Discovering Feltmaking; Part 2 – Using Colour; Part 3 – Surfaces and Edges; and Part 4 – 3D Felt.
These online workshops have been developed by the IFA to help create an understanding of the process of making wet felt, paying particular attention to the quality of the finished felt.
These courses are invaluable for all feltmakers. You may be just starting out in feltmaking or, as a more seasoned feltmaker, want to find answers to your questions. Our workshops teach you how to make small-scale samples using the wet-felting method. By the end of each course, you will have created a personal resource that you can refer to for all of your feltmaking projects. Open to IFA members and non-members.
On Sunday, August 20th, a beautiful sunny day, our Open Day was held in the CIE Sports and Social Club, Inchicore, Dublin 8. We aimed to introduce wet feltmaking and bring our love of the Craft to a wider audience.
We were set up and eager to welcome our first visitor/participant at 11AM. Each participant would make a flower with wool from a choice of three options. All wool and tools needed were provided. Written instructions were available and could be taken away and tried at home.
Through the course of the day, we were thrilled to welcome over 40 visitors. We also welcomed some new members who joined today. Thank you to all!
Photographs courtesy of Fiona Leech and Deirdre Carroll.
This event would not have been possible, and the success that it was, without the help of a number of people. Thanks to all our demonstrators, Juliane, Marian, Hélène, Elain, and Adrienne. Thanks also to new members Hilary and Valerie, who jumped in and volunteered. Many thanks to Annika, who, this year, was responsible for the publication of our book “Exploring Irish Wool for Feltmaking ‘. A number of books were sold today. Unsurprisingly, there was great interest in her demonstration of carding and combing using Irish wool. Thanks to Fiona for providing tea and coffee. Thanks also to those who brought along cakes and biscuits for us to enjoy. Thanks to Lorna, who arranged the hire of the hall and ensured everything was in place.
In particular, I have to thank Juliane for taking the lead in organising such a fabulous and successful day. Thank you for your commitment, organising skills, boundless energy, and infectious enthusiasm.
Thanks to Juliane and Marian for ensuring that all the participants had everything they needed.
Apologies if I have left anyone out.
Thanks to everyone who visited us today; we look forward to seeing you again in the near future.
Regards,
Deirdre Carroll Chairperson Feltmakers Ireland
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How to use QR codes: point your cell phone camera towards the QR code and click on the link that will pop up on your screen. This link should take you to the specific video.
The Daisy Coaster with Link to the YouTube Video on Feltmakers Ireland’s ChannelThe Lily Bud with Link to the YouTube Video on Feltmakers Ireland’s Channel.The Cupped Flower with Link to the YouTube Video on Feltmakers Ireland’s Channel.
A short video of visitors working on their flowers is on our Facebook and Instagram pages.
Again, many thanks to August Craft Month and National Heritage Week for so kindly publicising our Open Day.
August Craft Month has an online audience experience survey HERE
Feltmakers Ireland 