Fun with felting

Guernsey u3a member Karen talks about her love of felting which inspired her to start a new u3a group.

The Felting 360 Degrees group in Guernsey u3a aims to use felting as part of the process of making something useful. We use both Wet Felting and Needlefelting techniques.

I am an obsessed felter and so started the group to pass my love of felting onto others. We are a small group between 6 - 9 people in each session which allows one-to-one help and a great team effort in encouraging each other.

The group started with Felted Jewellery, while the next session looked at flat felting and using wet and needlefelting techniques to make a piece of felt that can then be turned into either a picture with stitching, or an item such as a pencil case or sunglass case or small purse through sewing. We then did 3D felting, using an internal resist to make a wet felted shaped pot, or using Needlefelting to make a 3D Character or animal.

Here are our first projects made by making a wet felted roll of wool and then drying and slicing into beads, which are then made into Bracelets,Earings and Necklaces. The second method was to felt over aluminium wire to give the felt structure, then wet felt, and dry then twist into a shape of a bangle.

Our felting group will start again after a summer break in mid November, the first meeting is to bring along ‘unfinished’ projects and the information is going out in our newsletter this month.

We all know we start many hobbies and leave them in project bags unfinished and mostly forgotten, so the aim is to try at the first session to complete one! Then of course we will be on to some Christmas themed projects, I am going to introduce Gnomes and Baubles, which should be fun and easy to do for a beginner.

The aim is to meet monthly during the winter, with a few special project days to complete some larger projects, which can't be done in a couple of hours. But as its a group this could change depending on the wishes of the attendees at the first group. It's member led after all!