Felt Making with Children

Children love felt making! There's something magical about taking these fluffy bits of wool and turning them into a beautiful piece of art using just your hands, water and a bit of soap.

When I entered the world of felt making 3 years ago, I immediately saw the benefits of teaching it to children. Since then, I've taught over 1000 children how to make felt and, I can honestly say, they all loved it!

So, what is it about felt making that children love? 

First, they love the slightly messy nature of it - using water and creating bubbles with the soap (and yes, I encourage bubble making competitions!) are just downright fun. Somehow, they don't realise it's messy in a clean way and I certainly send them away with squeaky clean hands.

They love 'Milking' the felt, a technique used to squeeze water out and give it an extra 'felt'. The action is like milking a cow and they can't get enough of it.

They experience success! It really doesn't matter how old you are what your ability is, everyone can make felt. Children quickly realise this and just revel in creating a piece of art. Older children work from photographs and this can be challenging but, with a little encouragement and support, they're proud of what they've created.

They learn! Contrary to popular belief, children love learning. Felt making offers so many opportunities for children to learn. Of course, there are the many aspects of art and design to learn about but I also teach children science, maths and geography during my workshops and they enjoy it. 

The awe and wonder children experience during felt making is amazing and, as a teacher, I love seeing it and encouraging their creativity, allowing them to explore a new medium and to play, to discover and most of all to enjoy. 

If you'd like to try felt making with your children, then check out my website, www.felt-ed.co.uk for details of my monthly kit club, artist in residence work with schools and resources for teachers. 

What is felt?

Simply put, felt is a fabric.  It can be both soft and hard, flat or sculptural, it can be made in a variety of ways and produce a wide range of items.  It is marvellous and I just adore making it.

When I made my first ever piece of felt on day 1 of the Foundation Felt course at Artybird Carnforth, my tutor, Kate, told us that by the end of the year we wouldn't know how to make felt, and she was right!  In that first year, I learnt so many ways to create it that I didn't know just 1 way but a wide range of techniques to create different types of felt, using different types of fibre and for a range of different purposes.

Felt is predominantly made using wool (although other fibres can be used depending on your technique).  There are hundreds of different breeds of sheep in the World, each producing fibre with different characteristics and therefore requiring different techniques to felt.  

There are 2 main ways to make felt:  wet felting and needle felting.  

Wet felting uses water, soap and agitation to create a felted fabric whereas needle felting uses a barbed needle to stab and mesh the fibres together. I'm not going to go into detail here about how each technique works, we'll save that for another post!

Felt is an amazing textile to create and work with and holds so many possibilities for creating pictures, sculptures and everyday items and I never tire of making it.


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Welcome to Felt-Ed

I'm very excited to be blogging as Felt-Ed.  For my first post, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about me, Felt-Ed and what you can hope to find here on the blog and on my website 

Who is Felt-Ed?

 

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Felt-Ed is me, Sarah Jones, a textile artist specialising in felt making. I am also a qualified primary school teacher and have worked in nurseries, primary schools and within the community learning sector.  I completed my Level 1 City and Guilds in Creative Textiles, where I achieved a distinction, back in 2013, and have just completed my Level 3 Certificate in Feltmaking.  I'm looking forward to starting my next course in Textile Embellishment in September. 

What is Felt-Ed?

Felt-Ed is the place to go for resources, workshops and felt-making kits for children and the education sector. Here on the blog, you can expect to find interesting and informative articles about felt making and the teaching of art whilst over on my website, you'll find kits, lesson plans and other downloadable resources. Combining my love of felt making, with my knowledge and experience of teaching, I'm going to be sharing the fabulous art of felt making with everyone.

How did Felt-Ed begin? 

Felt-Ed started out as a part of The Gingerbread Bunny.  Back in June 2014, I worked with Lowton Junior and Infant School in Wigan on a large, felt wall hanging for their new entrance.  During the week long project, every child in the school was involved.  It was such an amazing experience and I knew, from that moment, that sharing felt making with as many children as I could was my mission.  

Over the following year, I worked in a further 7 schools in Wigan, Chorley, Bolton and Warrington - some for large scale projects, others for half day workshops as part of arts weeks - each was marvellous and we created some wonderful felt art based on gardens, flowers, the sea and even Lowry.  

I've decided to separate out my work with schools and the education sector so that I can continue to develop it into something exciting and informative.