workshop | Teri Berry Textiles

Wow, what a week! Last week saw the second module of my FDAD course at West Deam, it was an incredibly intense 6 days, I was a zombie by Wednesday but made it to the end and I am so glad I did, it was well worth it. I will post about that when I feel a bit more recovered!

I got back from West Dean on Friday afternoon and had to pack the car for an Etsy Local fair in Guildford, at the time I was so exhausted I questioned if I would make it through to the end of the fair but the wonderful people of Guildford carried me through with their fantastic sense of fun and laughter 🙂

A slightly smaller space than the last fair but it still attracted plenty of attention.

The people of Guildford really surprised me, I expected to sell a couple of my more conventional styled hats but it was the really quirky ones that everyone wanted to try on and buy!

The horned hat was very popular…

But the prize for the best reaction had to go to this gent’s youngest son, his delighted laughter when his daddy turned around to face him in the hat was the most endearing and honest response I could have wished for, his wonderful reaction had us all laughing along with him 🙂 And that is how the horned hat found its forever home! I hope to see it out and about around Guildford 🙂

Almost as soon as I put the alien hat on display to fill the spot vacated by the horned hat this lovely lady came along and snapped it up!

Well done Guildford, I was pleasantly surprised by your willingness to embrace the unconventional, I will bring more of my wacky hats next year! 🙂

Everybody was in such good spirits, there were a lot of conversations along the lines:

Friend 1: “Ooooh that’s lovely, I really like that”

Friend 2: “Oh no, that wouldn’t suit you at all!” while nudging me or giving hand signals to say, “could you put it aside, I will be back to buy it just as soon as Friend 1 can’t see me getting it for him/her”.

This was a very successful event and one I would gladly take part in again, the only snag is I have sold about 25% of my stock, I need to get making again! 🙂

Lastly (thank you for reading this far), the new dates for the FFS online classes have been posted on the FFS website, and I will be hosting a new class on making seamless felt bags, from small pouches to rucksacks, please check them out and drop me a line if you have any questions.

I spent a fun but exhausting day last Tuesday with art-centric holiday club, Art Box. Approximately half the children took part in the autumnal themed felt picture making class in October, so already had a little felt-making experience. All the same, I think it was a little ambitious to have 22 children making felt over a resist with only 1.5 teachers (Wendy, who runs Art Box has made a few pieces of felt before but not over a resist). Most of the children did very well but some of the stockings had holes or came out an odd shape (I can only imagine they laid all their layers in the same direction) and some of their decorations came off during fulling. On the whole, I think the children were happy with what they had made but I suspect if I had been working with a smaller group, their stockings would have been better quality, I think it might be prudent to spend a few hours training the assistants before the next session…. we live and learn 🙂

As always the ideas the children had for decorating their stockings were amazing and blew me away!

I’m afraid I only managed to get photos of about 2/3 of them amongst the mad dash to clean up at the end of the day. The first 2 were made by friends who wanted to have matching stockings… how cute is that?! 🙂