South East Open Studios 2012

South East Open Studios 2012 has arrived!  I spent last week tidying and setting up the studio, making some new bead necklaces and bracelets to display along with my flower corsage wallhanging (see earlier post), putting up posters locally and hoping for sunny weather!  The latter of course didn't happen, instead it was all rain over the Jubilee weekend.  Anyway, fingers crossed this weekend for sunnier weather to welcome visitors.  Here are the dates I'm open:

Saturday 9, Sunday 10, Monday 11 and Saturday 16 June, all 1100-1700.

I’ll again be demonstrating feltmaking and showing a range of felted and stitched textile work, including clutch bags, jewellery, flower corsages and small art pieces.  If you’d like to come along and catch up on what I’ve been doing in the past year, learn about feltmaking or even perhaps attend a workshop, you’ll be very welcome.

I'm running taster workshops during Open Studios, to make either a bead bracelet or a brooch.  So if you would like to learn more or book a place on Sunday 10 or Monday 11 June 2012 (all 0930-1100, £15 per person), please get in touch.  If those dates don't suit, just let me know and I'll be happy to agree a suitable time with you.

And if you’d like to make a day of it and are particularly interested in textiles, there are several other studios close by who are also open on the above days showing art quilts and silk painting amongst other things.  Just visit the South East Open Studios website: www.seos-art.org.  Look forward to seeing you!

Felt Flower Wallhanging

With Open Studios coming up, I wanted to create something new for the studio, as well as to find a better way of displaying flower corsages.  So I created a wallhanging to pin the flowers to, which doubles up as something bright and decorative for the studio.  Thought I'd share some before and after photos, so you can see the process. 

Photo 1 shows the felt fleece all laid out in landscape colours, I then added some bubble mohair wool strands to act as flower stems.  Photo 2 shows the developing felt during the process - flattened with hot soapy water and rubbed to help the fibres felt together.  Photo 3 shows the finished felt (shrunk by about 30%) - I didn't worry too much about keeping neat edges as I knew I was going to cut the felt.  All in all this took about a day to make (half a day to make the felt and another to create the hanging). And we both appear on this week's front cover of our local newspaper to advertise Open Studios - link here:Oxted County Border News, 24 May 2012