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.