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Catch up with my new blog site to get the latest news on felt and all that I've been up to in the last year. Click here to go there. Or, just scroll down the page to read all the news in detail!

Melbourne December 5 2009

Melbourne December 5 2009 I am at the last meeting of the
year of the Victorian Feltmakers in Melbourne.

Here I am at the final meeting of the year at the Victorian Feltmakers in Melbourne.

This is wonderful group of felt makers with membership of over 200 covering the whole of Victoria. I am very pleased to say that I am now number 2007 on the membership role.

I gave a little presentation about me and my work and of course, about my role as Publicity Officer for the International Feltmakers Association as well as London co-ordinator for the group.

There was a shared lunch and a show and tell session. The standard of their work is very high and I hope that they will invite me to run a workshop for them when I am next in Melbourne. A very enjoyable day.

News Page - November 2009

There was a big change for me in February this year as I left my house and studio in the Cotswolds and moved back to London. I really miss my lovely workshop but I have to be content with my 10 foot by 6 foot shed in the garden. It may be small but it has everything I need in it except for a loo.

I was trying to keep my workshops going in the country and Anne Griffiths, the textile artist, had very kindly allowed me to use her studio in Churchill to run some of my workshops but unfortunately she couldn’t keep the studio and so I had to go as well.

I am now running my workshops from a super space in Highgate, North London. Please look at my Studio Workshops page to check on what I have to offer in the way of workshops. Please remember that I am very happy to run a special workshop for you and your friends, group or guilds and of course I am still running my felt birthday parties for the younger set.

October 3rd was the International Day of Felt as chosen by Felt United, a group of feltmakers from Norway and Hollan, www.feltunited.com. They decided that feltmakers around the world should celebrate by decking the natural world, buildings and ourselves and anything else that stands still long enough in felt with the colours ranging from yellow through orange to red. I am the co-ordinator for the London group of the International Feltmakers Association at www.feltmakers.com and so I organized a Guerilla Felt session outside the Tate Modern in London. We were met by bemused passers by and talked felt to whoever wanted it. The Tate moved us on but we reinstated ourselves on the main pedestrian walkway by the Thames. Some of our group also decorated the Millennium bridge with strands of coloured felt and labels proclaiming who we were. This is probably the reason the Corporation of London emailed us to ask for all the felt to be removed. That was a shame as it brightened up a grey day in London.

Earlier this year my London group was lucky enough to get a two day workshop opportunity with India Flint from Victoria in Australia. India is a eco dyer and we spent a wonderful weekend wrapping flowers, leaves and berries into bits of cloth and cooking them up and then marveling at the wonderful results of colour and prints that naturally occurred. Visit her blogspot to see her work and read her musing at prophet-of-bloom.blogspot.com

My big news is that I am off to Australia for three months to spend some quality time with my daughter Gemma, son-in-law Nathan and grandson Oliver who is two and adorable. I am hoping to visit Feltmakers in Australia and maybe run some workshops if they will have me. I will be back in February 2010 to resume my felting activities.

Clarks Shoes Special Workshop

The children's shoe designers at Clarks shoes preparing
their new animal designs for the 2010 collection.

I was asked by the children's shoe designers at Clarks Shoes to run a special workshop for them. It was held at their London office in Hammersmith and so on a very rainy London Tuesday I arrived expecting to run a normal creatures workshop day making felt birds but the girls had other ideas.

It was a meant to be a funday for them, something different from their normal office routine. They all came along with designs that they had worked on for their new range of children's shoes and I had to interpret their drawings into a three dimensional shape. As you can see from the picture which was taken just before they wet felted their creatures they certainly managed to create an unusual menagerie. The elephant was particularly fetching.

Fashioning Felt Exhibition

International Feltmakers Association Exhibition

This picture was taken outside the Cooper-Hewitt museum in the old Carnegie Mansion on Museum Mile in New York. It is the design museum of the USA and for the exhibition it was filled with a wonderful and beautifully laid out display of felt from around the world. The education department asked me to run some workshops during the exhibition run and so I went to New York for a few days for that purpose.

I left London in gloriousl sunshine and arrived to find New York rainy and cold, so much so that I had to wear all the clothes I had bought with me at once to keep warm. The weather got better and the workshops went very well and I got a contract from the Smithsonian Institute that I am now going to frame.

March 2008 - New Arrivals

Caroline & Joshua

Since my last newsletter I have become a grandmother. Oliver James arrived on September 11th 2007 in Sydney, Australia to Gemma and Nathan. I was lucky enough to be there to see him just after he emerged into the world. He is a beautiful baby as you can see from his picture here. Another trip to Australia over Christmas gave me lots of time to acquaint myself to the art of nappy changing again. (show pic of Oliver here)

I became a grandmother again as Dan and Caroline had a baby, Joshua in May 2008.

Felted Friends by Sue Pearl

While I was in Australia for Christmas 2007 my book was published there by Search Press. It had already appeared on the shelves of the bookshops and online booksellers in the America and Canada’ published by Storey Books there, and the UK in November published by Search Press but Australia and New Zealand released it in December.

It is now available through many outlets as well as here on my own website. It is priced at £9.95 and is a step by step instruction book on felt making from making flat felt to three dimensional felt and then onto how to make my individual felt creatures. It has over 25 projects all fully explained and is in full colour. Just click on www.searchpress.com to buy a copy!