Blog | Teri Berry Textiles | All things felting and fibre

I hope you had a relaxing holiday spent with loved ones and 2019 has got off to a great start?

After a very busy December with almost too many commissions I allowed myself a well-earned week off between Christmas and New Year but yesterday was a fun reintroduction to the world of work; I was teaching 10, ten-year-olds at a birthday party for twins, Niamh and Hester. They were a very lively group of young ladies and they all did incredibly well (8 had never made felt before), these were the wonderful wool paintings they made:

Hester made great use of the nepps, I know some experienced feltmakers who struggle to get these to stay where you put them!

Can you see the sequins Niamh added to her tabby cat’s whiskers?

lovely use of dyed wool locks to create textured pebbles on a beach

Didn’t they all do fantastically well?

Sketchbook Challenge 2019

I was a little late getting started with this, but Magenta Sky started a new, 30-day sketchbook challenge on Jan 1st. I took part in one of these last year and it was a lot of fun and a good incentive to make me doodle in my sketchbook every day. It’s free and you can sign up at any time (the daily email prompts start whenever you sign up), if you would like to play along you can sign up here: http://www.magenta-sky.com/online-courses/30-day-sketchbook-challenge/

These are my interpretations of the first 3 prompts but there is also a FB page for those who have signed up to join in where you can see literally thousands of other images….

Day 3 – Bags (I went a little obscure and chose some folded paper bags)

I am often asked what inspires the pieces I make, the truth is inspiration can strike anywhere, sometimes it is the materials themselves, the pattern on a piece of sari silk or the tassels on a charity-shop scarf for example. Nature is another great source, the textures of a patch of lichen or orange-crimson autumnal leaves against a bright blue sky. Memories from holidays or previous careers such as watching cells growing in a petri dish from my days as a “lab rat”.

As some of you may know, I used to SCUBA dive a lot and frequently draw inspiration for my felting from the underwater world, for my new collection I couldn’t resist the gloriously colourful world of nudiranchs (pronounced noo-dee-branks). I confess I have been slightly obsessed with these little sea slugs for more than 20 years but the usual response when I try to describe them to non-divers is, “noody-what?” Their name means naked gills in latin and refers to the fern-like gill structures you can often see sprouting from their backs.

I love them because they are so outrageously colourful and don’t seem to care who sees them strutting their stuff in the magical aquatic world. I can’t think of a better muse to create a fabulously colourful set of wearable art, deep down, who wouldn’t want to be a nudibranch? 🙂 If you google “nudibranch photos” you will get a taste of their fantastically beautiful world and the colours will be much less washed out than those in my photos.