a life of felt

Archive for August, 2009

Felt United comes to Ilkley

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Saturday 3rd October is the first International Day of Felt, where felters around the world are encouraged to show their art using a theme of yellow through red.  A few of mad souls have banded together to do something for the day and this has quickly snowballed into a felt trail around the town of Ilkley

We have a number of shops involved including: a cafe, 2 dress shops, menswear shop, art shop, pet shop, hardware store, gallery, haberdashers, 2 charity shops and the local newspaper offices. I can’t wait to see what beasties Katharine produces for the pet shop! I hope to begin showing some of the work over the next few weeks and will definitely do a gallery of the trail as well.

The local region of IFA (International Feltmakers Association) is also involved and will be exhibiting a number of small tops. They’re gorgeous and look like dresses for teddy bears.

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More about rugs

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

It’s traditional to toast the felt rug before the final unveiling. We had a go at the workshop at penning our own with each person contributing one line.

May it welcome many friends both two and four legged,

We hope the love in its making is somehow reflected,

And joy in the heart in the friendship and humour it gave us all in its making

May our muscles recover and our laughter continue

In celebration of new skills discovered in our pairs,

As it sits in our houses collecting memories all year through

Below is the front and back of the rug by Julie Blyth, brilliant when you consider what a novice Julie is.

julieblythejulieblythe2

We also discovered that we had a poet amongst us as Alison Brindley came up with her own uniue toast.

Ode To The Felt
 Our patterns we laid on the front and the back
We used all the wool – in fact a whole sack!
We rubbed it and bashed it and threw it around
We rolled it and thrashed it down there on the ground
We took it outside and got lots of strange glances
As we pranced up and down doing weird rhythmic dances
We’ve learnt to distinguish the fleece from the tops
We’ve dried up with towels and wrung out the mops
We’ve waded through water and formed a small lake
But had lots of laughs and some rather nice cake
We’ve all done so well and are feeling quite smug
As we each head back home to show off our new rug
So let’s raise our glasses and let’s make a toast
To Angela Barrow our wonderful host!

I know I enjoyed the workshop and most have been kind enough to let me know they did too so it looks like I’ll have to repeat it next year. Jeni said “I had a really enjoyable two days so thanks for your company and support.”

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