New lace vest and new stock in the shop!

Its slightly image heavy for all those people who enjoy looking at me (Not!)

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Project Wilderness delivery time

On Saturday I travelled to Dublin to deliver the pieces for the project called Wilderness, by Agata Stoinska of Dlight Studios (http://d-lightstudios.com/) and Eddie Shanahan (http://designerdublin.ie/tag/eddie-shanahan/)

Here I am posing in a piece made by Niki Collier, a local designer from Dublin.

CRAFTed Programme

This year is the first year when CRAFTed is run nationwide. It allows craftspeople to develop custom planned craft workshops with local schools. Each craftperson works directly with teacher with whom the workshops are delivered.
 

After a series of preparatory meetings: such as child protection training etc, we finally got paired with teachers from our designed schools.  

I loved the idea that both the teacher and a craftperson had the opportunity to meet and develop a theme round which the series of five 2 hour workshops will be run.


There are essentially two teaching approaches: one is whereby the craftperson is focused on teaching the skills and the process of making. Whilst it often delivers quality product it can sometimes be limiting for childrens creativity.

 Say a good example is if i am making felted bowls, i will be giving kids set plastic templates, that are essentially one shape. Its better to allow kids to design their template and explore it from there. This approach is more difficult as kids are more likely to make some mistakes in the project.

But what mostly excites me about is the possibility to let the creativity grow and flow. More importantly is to run such a project in a wider perspective, that is to explore the main theme and process so it seamelesly fits in the curriculum.

 Ie: feltmaking can be treated as an example for science of materials, where juxtaposition between soft/ coarse wool and dense,sparse could be used to exemplify different properties of the material and design possibilities.

The project can also touch upon math ( say calculate the cost of materials and work used to create the item versus the hypothetical price).  History, English and Geography can follow in the same manner.

Project Wilderness application

This week is dominated by preparation of custom pieces for project Wilderness  by Agata Stoinska, fashion photographer and Eddie Shanahan, the biggest man in the Irish branding world.
The pieces are inspired by my understanding of wild chaotic elegance. The concept is based on multitude repetitiveness of one pattern.

In my design process I am influenced by the materials i already got in my stash.. Ie. I had over a 600 leaves cut out from pre-felt left hanging around in my stash..

What to do? I decided to dye them in a mix of red, orange and viOlet so they resemble fire!
Next i dyed some felt fabric..
Since my pattern making skills are next to nothing i just draped the fabric on the mannequin and cut slits here and there to fit it to shape.

I think it worked out very well!
I sew the remaining leaves starting at the bottom of the jacket. Finishing it with a ribbon. The jacket is substantial but feels very light thanks to the fabric.

The second piece is more romantic, the lace pattern adds to surface interest and the hood makes the model look more mystical. I have to change the shape of the hood since it came out very shallow. Not sure what color to dye it though.

New design - use of leftover material :)

Tonight, I dug out some leftover pre-felt and arranged it into an intricate pattern.
  it reminds me of Christmas - a bit like a mistletoe.
What do you think?

Students in the studio - Birgitta Olausson from Sweden :)

 From time to time I am contacted by people interested in one to one tutoring. I offer 2 days feltmaking workshop that covers all most important aspect of feltmaking using hands and sanding machines.

I was visited by Birgitta Olausson, a Swedish rug weaver and we spent a delightful  two days working on various felt designs that can be seen in my etsy shop.  Birgitta, is based in Uddevalla, Sweden, a small city overlooking a dramatic bay.  She is a long term textile artist who makes these beautiful rugs.

Here is her website: http://www.birgittashantverk.se/

  This one has been given to me and I am amazed at the quality of weaving and the smoothness and gentleness of the design.  This wooden object is a felting mouse.

We made felted flowers, 4-5 different types of scarves and we hand - dyed them.

this one is a ruffle type scarf that is very popular amongst Russian feltmakers.  We made everything in white and dyed it in various wild colours!

Here Birgitta is making some lovely flowers, we made 10 to learn how thickness of wool influences the size and speed with which a flower  brooch can be made.

We spend such a nice time together! We laughed, cooked, walked together round the city of Limerick and drunk the best Belgian beer Leffe at Nancy Blakes in Limerick.  We visited the  University campus which  offers a very serene and tranquil environment to enjoy the natural landscape of the river Shannon.

 The Living Bridge at the University.

 

The President's House. 

It was great to talk to a person that is more experienced in Craft business than I am, Birgitta is such a warm person, Unique and great! I will miss you!

A few snippets from the studio, work made in preparation to National Crafts Fair 2011

Over past few weeks I have been very very busy making this and that but most importantly making scarves and flowers for the fair.
In fact Loads of them... I did not manage to fulfill my target in making but I made what I could.

Here are some snippets from my so called studio (for us it is ordinary messy kitchen) but you know...
If any of the images are upside down its my IPhone I can blame....

I hang merino wool so it expands and relaxes a bit before the roughness begins...
and here 50 scarves piled up in a heap..

nice pattern, but why on earth it all smells of wet dogs hair???