Saturday October 17, 2009
9:00 am – 4:30 pm
Cost: $125
Class Size: 10 students
A feltmaking workshop for pet and fiber lovers who want to support our domestic woolgrowers and the rare Leicester Longwool, featured breed of this year’s NYS Sheep and Wool Festival. The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC) Conservation Priority List for 2009 has moved Leicester Longwool sheep from Threatened to Critical status. The 2009 newsletter of the Leicester Longwool Sheep Breeders Association reports, “populations in the U.S. and other countries are declining, including in its home country of England, making the U.S. population all the more important to the long-term survival of the (Leicester Longwool) breed”.
The fabulous felting properties and texture of the rare longwool breeds make them the ideal fiber for this fun wet felting technique.
In this workshop you will learn how to select an appropriate longwool fleece and felt a wonderfully textured bed for your furry companion with a minimum of fiber preparation. The resulting creation is a wonderfully cozy mat for your pet to curl up on. It is perfect for protecting your furniture, tossing in the car or use in a crate. You will learn how to create a bolster on your mat with a resist technique if your pet prefers a pillow to snuggle up to.
Suggested Materials List:
Waterproof apron
Plastic drop cloth
Felting mat to accommodate the size of your pet mat- small 30 x 30” to large 60 x 60”
Liquid dish soap
Old nylon stockings to tie up with
non breakable measuring cup or yogurt container
pail
P.S. Dog NOT included !
Sunday October 18, 2009
9:00 am - 4:30 pm
Cost: $125
Class Size: 12
This wet felting technique focuses on creating a complex, highly textured surface design by employing a heavy collage of a myriad of fibers and fabric elements: a range of prefelts, silk fiber, metallics, locks of Leicester Longwool (the featured breed of the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival!), woven and knitted fabric scraps, threads and yarns. Adding small fragments of failed knitting projects, sewing scraps, bits of pet fur and outgrown clothing can expand your collaging palette. By mixing colors and textures in the collaged elements and felting them into a wool batt, you will create a very durable felt. Appreciate it as fiber art or as yardage for a bag or project. In a bag, the beauty of complex collage felt will evolve with use and wear, as surfaces abrade and new under layers are exposed. Felt collage captures memories by literally incorporating the fabric of your life.
Class suitable for beginners
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Robin Blakney-Carlson has found joy in making felt for over thirteen years, and passes the pleasure to others in workshops she teaches at Luckystone Feltworks Studio and other venues. Her work has been represented in exhibitions there and galleries in New York and New England. Luckystone is part of a vibrant business community of artists, craftspeople, and professionals, located in the historic Shirt Factory Building in Glens Falls, NY at the southern edge of the Adirondacks.
Robin studied at California College of the Arts and Crafts and Munson Williams Proctor School of Art. She discovered her passion for feltmaking after years of intense explorations into other fiber arts—needlework, weaving, handspinning and dyeing. In 1995 she made her first felt vest at a family workshop taught by her sister, internationally-known feltmaker Polly Stirling. Robin found in felt the perfect art form--combining color, texture, and fiber into a process that flows into project. She also finds great excitement in felt as a medium, fueled by her interest in material culture, apparel design and tradition. In her teaching, she loves to communicate this endless creative potential, as feltmaking students open to their own imagination and expressive possibilities.
Robin shares life with her husband Harry, a Standard Poodle, a Bedlington terrier, a Maine Coon cat, an American Fat cat (and occasionally two college age children).
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