Editor’s Note: Fiona’s classes are popular. To find out earlier, you may want to sign up for her email newsletter.
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 and instructor Fiona Duthie will teach her Surface Design in Feltmaking workshop this January. This is an excellent workshop for beginners or those interested in expanding their library of felt textures!
The classroom opens on December 15th, so there is plenty of time to discuss the materials.
{In our October Sunday Session, guild member Annika Berglund shared her samples from this (and other) courses}.
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.
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
Raised Surfaces create great textural dimension through the construction of felt forms that rise up and over the surface of our felt. By repeating these forms, we establish a strong sense of movement, creating felt canopies of leaves or waves, a floating garden of felt or silk blossoms, or dancing, twisting bone-like structures.
We make a series of samples in this class. These techniques can be applied to a vast range of felting projects, including wall hangings, vessels, sculptures, bags, and even garments, for the bold!
This online class runs from the 1st of September to the 30th.
We hope you are all doing well, staying safe and finding some time for crafting. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, there is one actual benefit from the pandemic, and that is that more felting workshops than ever are offered online. This means that you can learn from artists across the world and establish contact with other makers from many different countries. The best courses are quite pricey and fill up quite fast, but if you compare with the time and cost involved in doing in-person workshops they start to seem a bit more accessible. Also, remember, all renewing members will be placed into a draw for a bursary award to the value of €200 for an online international tutor workshop this year.
In this blog I want to present a list of artists whose courses I have done, or would like to do, in case any of you are looking for workshops to do in the coming year. Learning about new techniques and being encouraged to keep making has helped me retain a modicum of sanity in the last year and I am planning to keep it up in the new year as well. If any of you know of other courses and artists not mentioned here that you would like to recommend, please send us a line.
Fiona Duthie: Fiona Is well known for excellent online workshops. They one I took last year definitely improved the quality of my finished felt. She is also very generous with help and advice and added a number of extra tutorials to the course in response to what students were interested in. Fiona is opening registration for her spring courses on January 4th.
Pam de Groot: Pam’s workshops focus on 3D felting, and allows you to explore how felt can go from 2D to 3D and the effects and structure you get by varying the thickness of wool in a felted piece. Pam has not posted dates for courses in 2021 but sign up to her newsletter if you are interested and be first in line when registration opens.
Eva Camacho-Sanchez: Eva is a Spanish artist living in the US. Her online classes are mostly 2D, incorporating, mark making, stitching and Joomchi. Joomchi is an old Korean technique where water and agitation fuse mulberry papers together to create a strong and interesting surface that can be used on its own or with felting and stitching. Eva has not yet put up dates for 2021, but join her newsletter if you are interested in her courses.
The Online Felting Studio with Ruth Lane and Teri Berry have courses that are quite a bit cheaper, but much shorter that the ones I mentioned below. Ruth Lane teaches 2D embellishments and mixed media approaches to felting and Teri Berry ‘s courses include an interesting looking concertina hat. These would be good if you wish to dip a toe into online learning.
Mandy Nash: Based in Wales, Mandy did a few live zoom classes last year. I attended two of them (remotely) and learnt how to make two types of fabulously colourful felted fish. These are now available as a video down loads. They are quite long as they include the recording of whole day workshops. They are very reasonably priced, but require a specific wool (bergschaus) for best results. This is a very interesting wool as different colours of separate layers of wool migrate through the layers and give both vivid and subtle colour gradations when felted.
Patti Barker: Patti has a number of shorter tutorials and workshops. They are very reasonable and for the “Demystifying felt resist “ course she did Last year she even sent you all the materials needed. She does not have any dates up yet, but her courses can be found here:
Molly Williams: Molly’s workshops teach how to felt human figures in 3D around a metal armature. I am signed up to begin one of her courses in January, so will keep you posted. She has opened registration for courses beginning in March.
International Feltmakers CiFT: The International Feltmakers offers a course that gives a certificate in Feltmaking, CiFT. You receive course information online and send samples for feedback to a course coordinator. There is also a facebook group were students can interact and support each other. I have not done this one, but would be curious to sign up some time in the new year. If you have experience of this course, please send some feedback or information to Committee
International feltmakers also list a number of upcoming workshops on their Events page, including feltmakers Ireland’s upcoming workshop with Gabi MacGrath.
It seems this pandemic is just rolling on, with no real end in sight. It can be hard to stay positive at the moment, especially with the days getting darker and less scope for being outdoors. There are many ways to try to cope and to keep looking for the positive, and I wanted to share something that has been very helpful for me in all this. I live alone with my 12-year-old daughter and felt I needed something to help me stay connected and hopeful in the face of a long time with limited direct social interactions.
Feltmakers Ireland and sister organisations across the world have had to cancel workshops and meet-ups across the world due to the pandemic, the knitting and stitching show in Dublin being an example in point. All these cancellations have been hard on artists and teachers as a significant revenue stream has been cut off for them. A small spark of light in these troubled times is that the number of craft courses offered online has increased a lot, allowing access to knowledge and inspiration from a wide range of artists across the world.
I am a great fan of courses and workshops and love soaking up knowledge and inspiration from whatever artist or teacher available. I was in the fortunate position to have the time and the means to sign up to a number of online courses since the early summer, and I am certain that it has contributed in large part to keeping me relative sane through this very trying year. I know I would not have been able to attend such a range of courses if I had had to travel to each of them to participate. I also made a lot of new acquaintances and contacts by interacting digitally with the other students which has helped me stay positive and feel connected.
I have been asked to introduce you to some of these courses and give some ideas of courses coming up and where to find additional information if you are interested in taking a look for yourselves. These courses do cost money, but I personally have found them well worth the investment. With Christmas coming up you might be able to hint that they would be welcome in your Christmas stocking. If you still find that you cannot justify this expense, I hope to send out some more links to free online tutorials in the near future.
If you are interested in any courses similar to the ones I mention below, the best way to get enrolled is to go to the web page of the artist whose course you find interesting and sign up for their newsletter, or to follow them. They will then tell you when they have courses coming up and how to enrol. Fiona Duthie, (https://www.fionaduthie.com/workshops/online-felting-workshops/) for example is very popular. Her courses book up very fast and I already have a reminder in my calendar for the 4th of January when she will open registration for her 2021 courses. I just managed to get a spot on one of her courses in 2020 and hope to do more in 2021.
The first course I did took place during the summer, a course focussed on 3D felting, by the Australian artist Pam de Groot. (http://pamdegroot.com/online-courses.html )
This course helped improve the quality of my finished felt no end, and showed me many examples of how to take a 2D piece of felt and work it till it became a very different 3D object, based on shrinkage and different qualities obtained from different levels of thickness of the laid down wool. It also put me in contact with people from many different locations in the world who all shared an interest in felt and we created a small community that felt very encouraging and friendly.
This was a shorter course, and Patti sent us all the materials needed for the course. All other courses send you a list of materials that you had to get yourselves. Patti shared some skills on how to get tighter, smoother felt by finishing by rolling the felt in on itself, without the bubble wrap. I made two little vessels, one as usual and one rolling it in on itself, and I must admit the second vessel looked better (the one on the left)
These are the samples I made in this course:
Another course I participated in was a two day live zoom course with UK artist Mandy Nash, making two different kinds of fish using a wool called bergschaus:
After that I joined a course led by Ruth Lane, called Nuno Felting with Paper Fabric Lamination. It added in mixed media techniques into felting which I found very interesting. I am still working on finishing samples from this course, but here is one that I am working on. I plan to add some beads and stitching. (https://permutationsinfiber.wordpress.com/about/ )
I have two other courses going on at the moment.
I managed to get a spot on one of Fiona Duthie’s 2020 courses: Felting over the Edge.
As the title implies it looks at how to do more with the edges of felt pieces. I still have 3 weeks to go to create a finished piece, but these are some of the samples I have made so far:
Recently I also started another course by Pam de Groot:
Texture and Dimension October 2020
The first part of the course teaches how to make a splash bowl. Easier said than done. These are my two first attempts:
In the 4 upcoming weeks we will be learning how to make spiral shell shapes.
I also have two more courses coming up end of this year, starting the new year, by two exciting artists:
These courses do require a reasonable internet connection. Also, you will have to invest in materials for nearly all of them. Some of them are very specific in type of wool needed. Not all students in all the classes I have participated in have had the specified wool. Sometimes that worked fine, sometimes it made it harder to get the expected results. As I wanted to take so many different courses I had some problems with needing lots of different wools in a selection of colours. It would both be very costly and take up too much room in my house. This became obvious after the first course and I decided to only get white wool of the specified type and figure out how to dye it myself. Some trial and error ensued, but I think I am getting the hang of it. That may be the subject of more blog entries in the new year.
Feel free to contact Feltmakers Ireland – Annika Berglund-if you have any questions about this blog entry or if there are subjects you would like us to look at or information you want to share.
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!
Feltmakers Ireland 