29 August 2012

There are no Fibre Police

This past weekend was the local fibre guild’s annual retreat, and I was invited to be the instructor for the weekend!

I ran a workshop titled “There are no Fibre Police”, an exploration into the fun side of fibre arts. We did variegated dyeing, art yarn, and nuno felting over the course of two days and we had a lot of fun experimenting and seeing what happened when we tried different things.

We dyed skeins of yarn with Wilton’s icing dye – we got bright colours and funky patterns using entirely food-safe materials. Given what this stuff does to yarn, I’m not really sure about eating it … but hey, it is awfully pretty!

We spent Saturday afternoon playing with an assortment of fibres and ‘additives’, making interesting yarns:

We had bits of yarn shrapnel, feathers, fuzzy store-bought yarn, firestar, and a whole pile of assorted things on the table and people tried blending the various bits and pieces together to see what happened.

We made thick-and-thin singles, plyed them with crochet cotton or funky yarns. Some knitted their creations into headbands, and others talked of plans to make stuffed toys for their kids, or perhaps interesting cuffs on funky mittens or hats.

On Sunday, we took fabric scarves and felted bits of fibre and assorted other bits and bobs onto them. Fortunately we were able to work outside in the sun, since this is kind of a messy job!

(Yes, that is a baby sheep by her feet … a bottle lamb that needed to be fed and taken care of was one of our weekend participants!)

All in all it was a fun and adventurous weekend – several of the participants came by to tell me that they’d really enjoyed themselves, which is exactly what I’d hoped for!

If your guild, conference, or fibre group would be interested in having me facilitate a workshop like this, please feel free to contact me (frazzlehead at flannelberrycreek dot com) … I love to share the joy of fibre arts!

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:11 pm

    It was a blast!
    J

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6:19 pm

    I'm very proud of your love for the fibre arts and your talent to share it! Enjoyed this post!
    mom

    ReplyDelete
  3. Am I surprised there was firestar? No, I am not. Am I sorry I missed it? Yes, I really am.

    ReplyDelete

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