Create and Craft Club

I am a firm believer of passing down skills, knowledge and techniques that can be used at home, school etc which adds to a well rounded life.  Many of which I also feel are what were once called life skills!

So I have a small craft club at school with some Year 7 students.  They have been trying skills such as basic knitting, simple stitches, basic weaving, creating items with felt and more recently.

To support the knowledge of felt we had go at wet felting.

They loved getting messy with this.........

They used a range of beads and sequins.

Used a range of stitches to add to the design.  We will need to come back to this again.

The students were then given a small canvas to paint on using fabric paints.  The aim was to take the stitched panel and continue the design beyond the stitched piece and on to the background.

Any theme could be used.  A bit of a Jubilee theme here perhaps?

I have a TA who also joins in and helps with the group.  We both like to make as well, it encourages the less confident students.  So the picture above is of Maureen's stitched Canvas.

Finally mine.  It was nice for us all to sit down painting our canvas and having a chat about anything.

The last stage was to hand stitch the handmade felt to the canvas.

They are now on display in the main reception area.  I put them up today so the students do not know yet.

I am really pleased with these as the students do not know what we are making each time and I am just getting them to appreciate that you do need to take more than 5 mins to make something!

So next week we are starting something new.

What do you think of them?  The girls are 12 and are coming to the end of their first year at Secondary school.

xx

OPAM - MAY Hand made felt and embroidery -

Well, May has not been as productive as that of previous months.

This is a little off the wall and I hope that this is acceptable for May OPAM.  I have been doing a lot of hand skills at school lately and wet felt making is one of them.  Many groups have got to grips with water, soapy solution and wool roving.  My latest group is a small group of girls who come to an after school club.  I need to be one stage a head to show them what to do so above is shown my example piece.

So we all made a wet felt piece for the main centre area.

We then taught the girls a few basic stitches.  Some had already completed a Textiles module and had some experience.  The option of adding beads and sequins to their felt to enhance certain areas of their design.  Their design really took on whatever pattern their wet felting created.  So it became a very spontaneous and creative development.

When they have finished their pieces I shall take some pictures for you to see.

I found some small canvases measuring 15cm x 15cm and taking some colours and shapes from their felted fabric and painted on to the canvases using poster paint.

The felt and embroidered piece is then attached to the dried canvas.

The final item can them hung up and admired.

So I have finished mine and after half term the group will put the final touches to theirs.

I shall take pictures to show you all, but the painted backgrounds look really good so far.

xx

Needle Felting

As a way of taking the edge off revising, I like to link in as many practical tasks as possible. learning through doing works better. So as part of their bonded fabrics my students had a go at needle felting.

As a base they cut out a shape that they liked using shop bought felt and then needle felted their own design on top.They then chose from a range of cross grain ribbon that I brought in and hand stitched a backing on with some stuffing inside to bulk it out a bit.They really enjoyed this, especially the freedom to do this by themselves. The dinner jacket was particularly inspiring and may have been partly due to the fact that they recently had their leavers ball. I also showed them the Janome embellishing machine but did not get any pictures. so I will come back to this another time as I really fancy one of these. Perhaps a birthday idea(?)

Sophie loves needle felting and seeing as hubby is going away again for a few days, I think some needle felting and other crafty things will be going on in the attic.

I was really pleased with the keyrings and after half term it will be Batik and Tie Dye for the younger group.

Off to my BIL birthday this afternoon. Sophie and I made some Rocky Road yesterday using a recipe from Nigella Lawson's Express book. We adapted it slightly. I now need to go and cut it up into mouth size bits after being in the fridge all night......wish me luck.

xx

Tuesday Treasures

Tuesday's have a habit of sneaking up on me and so here I am again and it is 11.30pm and only just posting it. Sorry, but the old day job does get in the way so much. Anyway on to more interesting things other than my forgetfulness.

Above is my first big attempt at hand needle felting! I sat down on a Friday evening with a book and a few tools and kept going until my eyes nearly gave out. It was one of the best evenings that I have spent. Hubby was out and Sophie was in bed so what else could I do but discover a new addiction!

In fact I like this so much it features in my side bar. Since then I have explored this idea further by making miniature pictures and I am now developing some card embellishment ideas too.

Recently at school I purchased a Janome Embellisher and during half term I intend to play and learn about all it will do. Then the GCSE exam groups can have a go and see how that can use it in their work.

Quite a recent and inexpensive treasure, but a treasure because it was a "First" for me.

Have a good week.

Final felt Post....honest!

Since going to Paris with the school I have not really had a chance to do much. My latest quilt block is waiting to be stitched together and I have not been to my sewing group for a while. June and July are manic at work and just to add to the mix we are having a faculty review next week which is a bit like an internal school Ofsted! So this post will be short and then I must get back to finishing what I need to do for next week.

On friday we started preparation for the log cabin cushion which we will be making until the end of term and in-between we tried to finish the last of the felt keyrings. I went stash shopping yesterday and managed to find some fine needle felting needles, so I shall replace the two of mine that got broken on friday and keep the rest at work.We are nearly there but here are the latest ones and the girls are really pleased with them. There may be some fleting kits being asked for at Christmas this year, opps sorry I did say I would not type that word didn't I ?

Pretty purple...

Tulips and daisies...

Enjoy the rest of the weekend and I shall be back tomorrow to let you know how we all got on at work.

xx

Fantastic Felt....

You may remember in my last post that I had brought home a half made felt sample to try and develop it further. Sophie had a little go before she ended up making her own felt picture.

Ages ago I had bought a felting book and read it many times, but as is sadly often the case, time to do anything never came about.....until now.

I bought the needle felting tool separately and to be honest I did not really like it. The felt wool tops shown in the picture are quite bright and this gave me an idea.

I carried on with it but I eventually started using the needles from Hobby craft without handle and I got on much better with it. I played around with a couple of ideas and ended up combining some.

I cut out some basic shapes from felt sheets and then needle felted on top of these. Leaves and flowers mainly. As you can see above.

The flowers are based on my felt book cover designs and I shall be making some more of these using needle felting for later in the year (I shall resist typing the word but it involves a decorated tree). I laid out the felted pieces on top of the backing to see where to put them, then I needle felted a few stems in.

Next I added the leaves and finally the flowers. I had great fun with this and once Sophie had gone to bed I carried on! The crazy background colours seemed to go quite well with the bright flowers and wool tops.

The backing helped to keep it all together and gave a good base to work on. Like Sophie I wanted to fully finish the picture so when we bought Sophie's frame I found one too.

A close up of the centre of the felt picture. I think a little something is needed in the bottom right hand corner to balance it all out a little better which is why I did not cut or try to get the piece to fit the frame until I was really sure. I removed the glass too otherwise all my hard work would have been squashed.

I really enjoyed making this and once I have added a little here and there it will go on display. I have a little wooden frame upstairs which needs a piece of work in it and I think some felting might be the answer. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

xx

Felting project Two..Edited

The second more structured felting task was to use a thick felt shaped backing with a leather cord and bead attached to it. I found these at Hobbycraft. They were ideal shapes in a good range of colours and were an ideal focused practical task. I made an example to show the students and silly me has not taken a picture, I will add one at the weekend. The above is one of the finished items.

At this point we hit a snag! The felting needles that we had been using started to snap. It was not the girls fault and in the end I decided it was because my needle at home and the students own needle to complete the work in the top photo, were successful because they were much thinner!! They could pierce the relatively think felt background much more easily. So this task came to a stand still and what we have decided to do is gradually complete them in between other tasks using my needles instead. At the moment I only have three! Never mind.

As they are finished I will add them to this post.

Edited:

This is my attempt at the above task...

More to be added..

xx

Sophie's Felting Fun...

I bought a book on felting some time ago and as is often the case did not get a chance to really look at it until a couple of weeks ago. I had a little go at home and thought that the girls would like to have a go at school. So in the lesson I showed them how to do hand made felt, pros and cons etc. I have a sample that I had made to show a different year group earlier in the year for the 'after it is finished' bit. I then gave them sponges, felting needles with handles and some coloured wool tops to have a practice with.

Here are some of their efforts. They have never done this before.

Initials were a popular idea.

This was very carefully made and surprisingly strong. This young lady had listened when I said we would be doing felting in a couple of weeks and decided to find herself a felting kit locally and have a go at home!! That is one of the reasons why I teach!!

We also looked at some theory work as part of the file to prepare them for the exam and then the lesson was done. So I said that I would take the felt sample home and see what I could do to develop it. Being a Friday Hubby would be out at his Model Car Club, so Sophie and I usually do something together at home, ie painting our nails, watching Mamma Mia etc.

It was not long before all this was spotted by Sophie who wanted to help. So after some tuition she had a go.

So that evening I started by trying to strengthen and add to the sample but it was starting to distort too much. Then thinking that kits generally have you felting onto something I decided to get some white felt from my stash and use it for the backing. So I started to felting the sample onto the felt backing and add further colours.

Well it was not long before Cbeebies was forgotten and felting looked more interesting for Sophie!

So we went and had a look at my stash and the wool tops that I had for felting, gave her my sponge and my own needle for her to use and she was away. With supervision this was a safe activity for her and she only broke 1 needle.

A design gradually took shape and she liked the fact that she could see something happening all the time. I had an idea for my own sample and she wanted to try it to my cutting out some flower shapes in shop bought felt and then felting onto this to give some texture to it. Once she had felted the flowers, with a little help from me with the tiddly bits to avoid stabbing fingers, she then had more ideas to add stems and leaves.

I kid you not, for 2 whole hours she sat there and worked on her felt picture!! I worked on mine sat next to her and we chatted all the time about this and that. It was spooky but it was easy to forget that she is only 6 years old. Such a mature level of conversation it made me see how short a time that she will be a small child. She was even asking me about my day at work!

I let her stay up later so that she could finish it as we were going to go to Truro and there we could get a frame for her picture.....

......and here it is....

Isn't it brilliant? Definitely high on the Slushy, Proud Mummy meter this one.

Here is the final piece... what do you think? It has been taken into school and now sits proudly in her room!

I am very proud of my Sophie, she is such fun and willing to have a go at anything. Maybe I am teaching the wrong age group? Well lets leave that for another blog post.

More on my felting efforts tomorrow plus my students second felting encounter.

xx