A busy month of teaching classes

 Bridget concentrates on her sweet needle-felted lady bug!

at MadArts in Madison County, VA.

 our finished Ladybugs...keeping cool under the umbrella

 Flower Fantasia class @ Louisa County Library

Group photo of flowers in bloom!

Japanese dolls in the making @ Crozet LIbrary

 Allie!! the most awesome YA librarian takes a break from helping to work on her own doll.

Wren proudly shows off her finished doll! Nice going Wren. 

Wren and her sister are my needle felting "groupies" 

They came to both classes at two different JMRL branch libraries this week. <3

Amazing young ladies from Crozet Library & their Japanese Dolls!!!

So proud of them! They did an awesome job and all made delightful dolls!

 A big THANKS! to the Jefferson Madison Regianl Library for allowing me to teach these classes for the summer YA ( young adults) program. What a wonderful opportunity for the teens in the communities to be abe to learn cool stuff for free!!

AK & the purple headband!

my flower headband biggest fan!

This lovely photo was sent by a dear friend yesterday. It is of her granddaughter who has a collection of my headbands and wears them 

A LOT!!

It makes me happy to see her wearing it and to know how much she enjoys them! :)

Hope to get some felting of my own done this week. I am teaching two feltmaking classes for the Jefferson Madison regional Library system this week. Both are needlefelting classes!

 I am excited :)

Wonderful Peace!

My hubby and I went to Dulcimerville.

 This is what it look like. We stayed at the Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain, NC. Just breathtakingly beautiful! I have been busy with my dulcimer and playing music the past few weeks and not much time for felting!  We had a wonderful time learning so many new tunes and new techniques to apply to old tunes!
and hence the title... Wonderful Peace which it the name of a precious hymn that i am learning. It is an arrangement from Tull Glazener. LOVE IT


 I have finished the last of the forty needle felted Japanese dolls and hope to get a group photo up here soon!! Need to put a few finishing touches... a few flowers in the hair, that sort of thing.

Today~ my order from New England Felting Supply came and I an eager to play with the new fiber!
Tomorrow ~I am going to Stony Mountain Fiber and packaging up wool to take to Augusta Heritage Workshops for our week long felting class!!

Heart Wings

My winged hearts!
needle felted with rainbow spirals

 These are not the greatest photos, but I wanted to at least put something here to accompany my blog entry. I took a bunch of them up to Hair Graphics in Mineral along with my headbands~ to offer them for sale since my dear friend Melonie is the shop owner. They are about  2 - 2 1/2 inches including the wingspan. They are mounted on card-stock paper and this is what is printed on the card:

The winged heart represents the freedom to love, to feel, 

to courageously rise above the mundane and reach full potential. 

It is a sign of joyful optimism and a representation of the free spirit. 

I believe i plagarized that from the internet some where & i would give them credit but I don't know where I found it. I made a bunch of red hearts with red glass beads for Valentines Day and was looking for something clever & meaningful to say about hearts with wings.

I needle felted the hearts and then the wings and then needle felted hearts & wings together.

 Afterwards I needled a little rainbow spiral on them....

they have pin backs on them so you can wear them as booches!

April Showers Bring May Flowers!

New Headbands !
Yesterday was bright & clear and I got outside to snap a few pics... so many mosquitos!

I have been busy making new headbands inspired by my friend's sweet granddaughter!

She was given one as a gift by a month or so ago, after my first batch of flower headbands "bloomed", and apparently she LOVES it and wears it a LOT!!  I wish I had a photo of her to post here. I think headbands are better viewed on a head, of course. :)

The only willing model I have here is my cat and he is not always willing at the same time I have my camera ready. :)

I am posting quite a few here in hopes she can look at them and "shop" for herself.

This one is pretty deep purple headband with a bright candy pink flower, the center has tiny bluey-purple glass beads handsewn and one bright yellow bead in the center! 

The ONLY one I used a button in the center...the button was sparkly & matched to soft turquoise merino wool I use for the headband part. The flower looks kinda blue in this photo but it is really a dark purple.

Bigger flower...deep magenta headband.. colors inspired by my orchids in bloom

 a BOUQUET!

100% wool felted headband with needle felted flowers & handsewn glass beads

the "first" batch

Inlay designs.... with wet felting

Felt Bag or Purse

These are two of my felt bags. They are approximately 6x8 inches with long handles. Made from NZ Corridale wool. I used a black wool roving type yarn that I got a Michael's for  the inlay design. I loved playing with the yarn making the swirly inlay design.

   

 Heres another bag which I have not added handles or decided how I want to finish. This I played with some prefelts and yarns laying thin wisps of the main color sliver to "lock" them in place. Daffodils were in bloom!

There is a "before picture" of this inlay on my May 14th post

close up felt inlay pre-felt & wool yarn

Another bag playing around with felt inlays made from prefelt and also little snippets of wool yarn.

 My thanks to Chad Alice Hagen for the  directions... 

this is "The Perfect Little Bag" from her book

Feltmaking: Fabulous Wearables, Jewelry & Home Accents

Musings on teaching

Yesterday I taught a class ( albeit, a small one_ only 2 people) on needle-felting Japanese style. We began with the sushi rolls and "graduated" to the kokeshi dolls. I had allowed two hours for the class but we easily needed three hours. These ladies were flexible with their time and the facility allowed us to stay an extra hours despite the fact that the craft room is also the kitchen and folks were planning a 80th birthday celebration for an anticipated 160 folks and we were in their "space". The were very nice about us staying although I suspect they really wished we were not there.

 I love to teach and I always learn so much. Finding the "right" way to give instruction so that it makes sense for everyone. I witness people that are challenged to do a task I take for granted is easy. I can easily forget how, for the complete "beginner", that these steps are not so easy.  Inevitably there are questions I would not anticipate and for which I have to come up with sensible answers on the spot.

Now I know I will need to make some changes in my instruction when teaching this class to teens at the library in June. I want people to feel successful and have a sense of achievement with their "creation".

I took the camera but didn't get pictures... they didn't actually finish the dolls in the time alloted even with the extra hour.  In retrospect, this class is probably best suited for folks who have had some experience in needling . Needle-felting is slow... and I rarely do it while paying attention to time. I think I'll bring music next time, too....