Category Archives: wet felting

Rainbow Hat

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This week, in between running the online concertina hat class, I have been working on a commission from New Calendonia, I confess I had to look up where that is, and turns out it is in the Pacific, off the east coast of Australia! I don’t think I could pick a location further away if I tried! 🙂

We have been making good use of the translator function offered by Etsy (my customer speaks French) and I think it is working well, but its a little bit nerve-wracking not knowing how much is getting lost in translation. She asked for a rainbow version of this hat:

 

This was the sketch I sent to check we were on the same wavelength:

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I spent most of this weekend working on it and this is the finished hat, still drying:

 

The second concertina hat class is progressing really well, we have such a talented group of felt-makes I can’t wait to share some photos of their work with you, I am so proud of them all! 🙂

Finally, a word of caution for anyone selling to customers in Germany, I have been working with a customer in Germany to contest a DHL customs charge for nearly 50% the cost of the goods I sent her, it appears they have decided the UK is no longer a part of the EU and therefore, subject to customs fees. My customer is understandably angry and I am more than a little annoyed with the half-wits at Deutsche Post. If you are selling to Germany, you might want to forewarn your customers of this potential issue.

Update: Deutsche Post have acknowledged they made a mistake and said they will forward the parcel which is now more than a week late 🙁

20 Felt Pictures and a Hat

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Wendy Hales of DesignSpark contacted me a few weeks ago about teaching a group of children to make felt pictures at their half term holiday club. I confess I had only ever taught groups of up to 5 children before and the prospect of having 22 pairs of eager hands and all the questions that go with them was rather daunting! But the day was a great success, exhausting but very successful, largely due to the excellent help from Wendy and her assistant. These are some photos of the pictures the children made, they were working on the theme “autumn” and considering some of the children were only 7/8 years old and none of them had made felt before I am enormously impressed with how well they did. It just goes to show what a forgiving medium felt is 🙂

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Alison another (slightly more mature 🙂 ) student, this time from my first concertina hat class forwarded some photos of her latest hat too, the pointy tip makes me think of a quirky wizard’s hat and I love her use of silk, you can see it has a lovely sheen even in the photos.

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The second concertina hat class is well underway and we have another wonderful group of very friendly and supportive students, one of whom made her first (gorgeous) hat within 24 hours of me posting the tutorial, now that it is enthusiasm for you! 🙂 I can’t wait to see the hats everyone else will make, I predict we are in for another bumper crop of incredibly beautiful and quirky hats… watch this space! 😉