Felting My Way Forward

It’s been a busy Summer and I can’t believe we’re into September…however, a wonderful paddle with the group SUP Kingston on my paddle board this morning was just the height of Summer. It was so good to get out as I had spent last week indoors mostly at a workshop with Australian felter Pam de Groot.  It was hosted by Lesley at Rosehaven Yarn Shop in Picton.

The workshop was ‘Mosaic Dress’….well, when we came to designing out garments I said you’d never get me into a wool dress…I’d have a hot flash and rip it off…so I made a vest…as did one or two others.

First we needed to create our ‘prefelt’, this is what we were shooting for.

This is my layout before wetting….we had 6 metres to work on! It took all of Monday and them some!

This is one of the dresses Pam had made that she brought to show is. It is a wonderful combination of dyeing on wool and silk. Modelled by Lesley’s lovely daughter.

 After spending Tuesday with one wall of the room full of tables with burners for the dye pots this is what I ended up with. I cut up my 6m of prefelt into random bits…I didn’t really know what I was going to do with them but I knew I needed enough colours and pieces to create the mosaic garment.
Some of these were dyed solidly and others the shapes and resists were marbles, discs, rubber bands, string, a wine bottle, pvc piping…..

Wednesday & Thursday – here are two shots of the back while I was playing with what to put where….

…..what to do with those circles and squares….hmmm

Here is are my pieces wetted down for the front, with my resists in place….

Lots of work for two days and we all ended up with most of our garment done….maybe a bit more tweaking at home.