Nuno Felted Scarf - 1 Day Workshop

There are still places left on this workshop- and here's the formal intro:

Nuno Felt Scarf

'A fun day doing wet felting to create a special scarf. Combining fibre and fabrics to create a light and elegant nuno scarf with a beautiful drape. We'll be piecing together different fabrics and using the fibres to hold the whole together. This workshop is a good challenge for beginners and for those with some felting experience.'

Saturday 15th October
10.00am - 4.00pm


As always, I think workshop prices at Cottenham are very reasonable compared with ...well, almost everywhere.  But the main reason to come is for the sheer joy of making something nice with a group of enthusiastic, like minded people!

£35 (£26 Concessions)  + whatever material you use. 


Go to  Cottenham V.C. Adult Learning for more details.

Brandon Ferry Tales Screen Print

The thing about making artwork for an event is that you  don't really want to publicise the finished product before the big day. 

So you've seen the studio pictures and now that the Ferry Tales Day has been and gone...

These were all made by Brandon Arts Society in a series of workshops and displayed fluttering along the High St on the day.  

See Market Place  for more about the event

Felt - Catherine O Leary Workshop

It seems like I'm always teaching - and I really do love teaching, so that's good. I think that teaching art and textiles is all about facilitating people's own creativity and I love the excitement and enjoyment that people have when they make something new.

Every once in a while I like to be a student myself and have my own creativity facilitated! And so this summer, I had big treat:  I went to the Atelier Fibre Fusing in the Netherlands to do a 3 day workshop with the wonderful Catherine O Leary.   This class was all about surface design using nuno prefelts and the finished product was a body wrap using these techniques.  

So, first of all a word about Atelier Fibre Fusing 
It's a good studio space - well equipped, full of light, big tables, spacious, in a village on the Amstel, just south of Amsterdam.   We were greeted by the very hospitable Dorie on the first day with coffee and home made apple pie and the food just got better and better as the weekend went on. 
 
What made this workshop so good is that after her introductory talk, Catherine constantly moved around the room giving each person one to one tuition and encouraged us to develop our own designs. So we all made very different things.  You see that here- Workshop photos

I deliberately took colours that I don't usually work with and somehow my piece turned out as something that probably wouldn't look amiss in the Lion King! Definitely looking for someone tall and flamboyant to wear this one and those of you who know me, know that neither of those qualities pertain to me. But I LOVED the process of making it.  The surface design aspect is exactly what I enjoy most about making textiles and I'd forgotten how very nice it is to be completely absorbed by intuitive working.

And of course one of the best part of going on a workshop is meeting a fabulous bunch of new people who are equally obsessed with felt and fibre!

This is my wrap, made from 2 pieces which can be worn in different ways

I screen printed some fabrics before went to Holland to use as part of the Nuno

So as you can see - I loved this workshop and if you ever get the opportunity to do a class with Catherine o Leary, grab the chance! I can't recommend her highly enough.

Brandon Ferry Tales

I've been working with the very talented and extremely hard working members of the Brandon Arts Society to do some screen printing.  These fabulous festoons will be displayed down the High Street on Sunday 18 September as part of a really special event:   

Ferry Tales.

If you are in the area,  come along - this will be an amazing day with theatre, art, story telling, poetry, dance and, of course, an opportunity to screen print your very own Ferry Tales shopping  bag.

 Thanks to Terry Kimpton who took these action shots of the screen printing workshops.

First day, learning to print.

By the second day everyone was printing for themselves.

The Methodist Hall transformed into Print Studio.

Everyone lends a hand!

And of course there was tea and cake! Although we didn't have much time to drink it!

 

 

 

Never too old to screen print

T-shirts printed by residents of Cottenham Court Care Home  to sell at their Open Day marking their 20th anniversary.

Next time I go there, I hope to see everyone wearing these!

Print Projects, Pilgrim Pru

Just before we broke up for vacation last year I spent a week working with a really interesting school - Pilgrim Pru

The Pilgrim PRU is a medical needs Pupil Referral Unit containing four distinct centres. Each centre designed and printed a hanging for their own space. The banners/ strings of bunting represent the group made up of many individuals.

The Phoenix is a school attached to a NHS inpatient eating disorders unit for young people.  They decided to make these lovely lengths of bunting.

The Darwin is based in an acute psychiatric adolescent unit. They made this banner reflecting the various interests of each young person and includes the 'hospital dog

And The Croft is a specialist child and Family unit for children under 13.



Here's a closer view of a very complicated rocket/ robot?... Whatever it is, I like it a lot!






On the final day we did screen printing with Addenbrookes Hospital School. This time the children printed black onto a predyed fabric because the classroom space was very limitted and this is always a good way to get great effects using a minimum of equipment.





We printed these on individual squares so that they could fit on a wheelchair tray if necessary and I sewed them up afterwards. I had to do a lot of unpicking to get them all the right way up!





The Pilgrim Pru has an Artsmark award and you can see more of their amazing artwork on their website at http://www.thepilgrimpru.co.uk/


Well done to all the young people who contributed to these banners and buntings. I really enjoyed working with you all.

Summer School for Teenagers

We had a funderful (ie fun and wonderful) day printing multicoloured T-shirts at Melbourn Village College Summer School with young people transitioning from primary to secondary school.