Delivering the arts project

As some of you know I went into Cambridge on Saturday to run a feltmaking workshop at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropoly. This was of course for my gold arts award in order to complete my arts project. I am pleased to say that it went very well and I am really pleased with the results. As I have mentioned before, Sarah-Jane Harknett has been the one helping me along the way to completing my arts project. She has been a big help and brilliant support in letting me do this workshop at the museum. In the end I ran the workshop for seven people (including Sarah-Jane.) Lets start from the beginning shall we.

The day began with a short introduction and a little about what we were going to achieve in the day. I then asked all the students to complete the first part of a feedback form I had prepared, in order to get a small idea of what people were expecting out of the day. With paper work out of the way it was time to give all the students twenty minutes to explore the museum with the aim of finding a piece with which to inspire their own felted piece. This could have been a pattern, colour combination or shape. Students then sketched their design for what they would like their piece to look like. Below are just a few examples of the sketches the students came up with.

After all this was done it was time to make a start on felting. The students all layed out their bubble wrap and I explained how to correctly lay out the fleece by pulling small bits off and laying them in a horizontal direction. This then followed another layer of white fleece layed in a vertical direction, followed finally by the first step repeated. The students had then got their three layers of fleece, so I went off to make a soap solution made from grated olive soap.

When everyone's fleece was completely wet I demonstrated how to roll your fleece package up tightly and start vigourously rolling the package putting pressure on it all the time. After 5-10 minutes the students unrolled their package and rotated the felt 90 degrees clockwise and repeated the same procedure. This was repeated four times until, when the felt is pinched in the middle, fibres don't lift up.

The students hard at work

It was very important at this point to stress that all the soap must be thoroughly rinsed out of the felt otherwise the soap, over time, will eat away at the felt. The felt must then be wrung as dry as possible. Lunch time!!

Ready for stage two

After lunch the students felt was dry enough to needle felt into so we got to work. Everyone was given a barbed needle felting needle and I explained that you must never use someone elses needle. With health and safety out of the way I demonstrated how to needle felt a small amount of fleece into the wet felt and explained a few techniques that can be used to create certain effects. Below are a couple of the students hard at work creating their pattern.

The remaining of the afternoon went fairly quickly with everyone trying to recreate their original design and all of them successfully doing so. At the end of the afternoon everyone had a brilliant piece of felted wall art, all of which looked like their original design. The afternoon ended with me taking a photo of everyone individually holding their piece in front of their original inspiration and then asking them to fill in the rest of the feedback forms.

Overall I am happy with how the day went, I can definitely pick up some pointers for whenever I do this course again, but I am pleased.
Sorry for the lengthy post, I had a lot to say.
Speak soon
Meghan