Family Felt Fun at the library

I am ecstatic that I am going to be doing felt ball workshop at our local branch of the regional library.  This is so exciting, since I am a library media specialist and met the Children’s Librarian through her presentations at our school. She saw the Pathways to Knowledge piece and that led to a conversation about feltmaking with groups. I had to take off my library hat and put on my feltmaker hat and the result is a class. This is marvelous.  In July I will have this gig, and then I will post more.

Sheep: ain’t they sweet?

I can’t get over how meeting a sheep whose fleece I use makes me feel! It adds a depth to the feltmaking experience I can’t quite describe. This is my friend from Spring Hill Farm, on the Kitsap Peninsula of Washington State.

Pathways to Knowledge

Pathways to Knowledge was conceived and facilitated by Valerie Stein and Debie Frable, and created by staff, students and parent volunteers who worked from February to July, 2006, to make it a reality.

 

Here is the whole story:
Pathways to Knowledge: an all-school community project
Soundview School, Lynnwood, WA
Valerie Stein and Debie Frable, designers.
January, 2006-July 2006

The Pathways to Knowledge project started when Debie Frable, art teacher at Soundview School, and Valerie Stein, feltmaker (and librarian at Soundview) got together and started discussing all-school art projects.

Stein had facilitated many community weavings at various events, but had long dreamed of a project using felt. As it turned out, this was an idea which allowed for an amazing range of skill levels to participate; kids from 4 years old to adults in their 70’s were able to contribute significantly to what has became a very beautiful piece.

Frable and Stein taught art classes from 3rd grade to 8th grade how to make the soft “prefelts” from which shapes could be cut. Older students then helped younger ones to cut leaves for the tree and created the trunk and other components. In addition to cutting their own leaves, staff were invited to create the stones for the pathways leading to this tree. Parent volunteers and others crucial to the Soundview community also cut leaves for the tree. Several felting parties were held to complete the felting process. The piece is now ready to be finished and backed, and will hang in the school’s library, a focal point for the Soundview community.

The symbolism which is represented in the tree is that knowledge grows as we work and learn together; the pathways are the ways in which the Soundview staff leads its students to that knowledge, and through this experience of travelling the path, everyone grows – students, staff, and families.

Beginning Techniques in Feltmaking

student workFeltmaking class to begin in just a couple of days at Gail Harker’s Creative Studies Center. What a great thing that 10 years ago I started studying there,and I will teach there soon!  I look forward to sharing with the students all the excitement and enthusiasm I have for this medium, and to passing on some of that delight. I will be posting more about the experience afterward.

*And what a wonderful experience it was!  The felt which came from this class was phenomenal – there was not enough time for students to explore everything they desired, but what they did have time for was lovely. They have given me permission to post their images here, so that is the next task.  What were lessons learned? 

1: Watch the edges of the table when throwing felt: Ouch!

2: Clarity of color and a sense of play are key pieces of the feltmaking process.

3: Though there are not lots of rules which must be followed to create lovely felt, paying attention to essential aspects of the science makes the art better.

Fabulous Fiber

Fabulous Fiber

What is it about felt that is so great?  I was a weaver for 20 years before I fell in love with felt, and all the properties of wool yarn which I have loved on the loom I get under my hands when I work the fleece, and then some.  In addition to the feel, the give, the amazing properties of the fiber in a chemical/physical sense, felt is a medium which lends itself amazingly well to painterly techniques. I have always wished I could paint.  In felt, I can.

Pincushion

It has been 6 years since we bought the felted pincushion business from friends Helen and Tom.  It has been an interesting road, and I truly thought we would be growing the business by adding contacts. The truth is that we could hardly keep up this past year, and our number of clients remains relatively stable,and very few.  This never ceases to amaze me. When we started out, we were making about 500 pincushions a year to wholesale around the country.  That seemed a huge number, and we were starry-eyed with the big feeling of marketing our own product.  We are  just barely into 2007 and already at 350 – last year’s total was 1800 pincushions!  Where do they all go? I expected that the market would dry up, but I guess everyone has a friend who sews.  I will post photos when I figure out the best way to show the story.

Hello world!

This is my feltmaking site. I hope for it to hold stuff about feltmaking – my own, and the amazement I feel at the work of others. Check back and see as I learn a new medium for sharing passion.