Catch up with me on my new blog site!
My new blog site. Click to see it!
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!

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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.
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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.
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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. |
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March
2008 - New
Arrivals
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!
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