What was on your intinerary today?

Here in Somerset the sun has most definately got his hat on..............hiphiphiphorray! The Mother and I had planned to visit the Stitch and Creative Crafts show at the Bath and West showground but then not got any tickets. Anyway a friend of hers won some in the local paper so we got to go for free, how fabulous.
So off we traipsed, the mother with a very sore and bruised foot asking a nasty fall recently, I do try and persuade her not to wear the stillettos at her age but well what can you do? The show is usually really busy but maybe because of the weather and because there is also the massive show in London at the moment it was fairly quiet. There are lots of different stands, scrapbooking and papercraft, stamps, decopatch, books, wool, beading, jewellery making, the lot.

We wandered around for about 2 hours in the end. I was particularly looking for some red pearlescent card to make butterflies for a riby wedding cake I had been asked to do this month. I am making the butterflies and my mum's friend is making and decorating the cake. She loved the cake ideas for mum's 70th when she made it so suggested it to the lady for her cake.

 We found some lovely card and also a sheet of embossed 12 x 12 card which I hope will make the wings look more butterflyee. After that we just mooched around. I got myself some project boxes, clear 12 x 12 lidded boxes to take bits to crop I am working on rather than lugging too much like I usually do. I also got a bag of Alpaca fleece to make some felt, you can die it so I can make whatever colours I like. I got some skeins of coloured wool too to use for the time being.

The lady from the shop called ''Sewciety'' came from Port Elizabeth, South Africa and was really helpful and interested in my projects. The shop she owns actually delivers fabric to you. She had some beautiful vintage cotton and cotton reels too which I would loved to have bought. I did get some lovely coloured buttons from her too. She also has her own blog which shows u cool places to visit and gr8 makes too. Go check it out here................I also treated myself to a fabulous basket with a drawstring lining for shopping

which because it is orange and not so popular was on special price of £6.00..............I do like a bargain.

So onto the feltmaking workshop. The lady who taught us is a very experienced crafter and does lots of other classes in Bristol but this one was organised by the Art coordinator for the Trust. We were introduced to wet felt making as there several different ways of making it. The first thing we had to do was to learn how to gently tease the wool out of the skeins in the correct quantities. The wool we used was Moreno and is in the pre-spun stage. Once we had mastered this part we started building up out wool to felt. The process is all to do with friction and water/soap. You begin with a sushi mat on your table or you can use bubble wrap with the bubbles upwards. You then start laying out your wool in 3 layers. The first layer lies vertically, you then add a horizontal layer and the final layer is again vertical.

Once you have your three layers you place a piece of netting or bubble wrap over the top. Water and soap is squirted over the layers of wool and the water smooshed out until the wool layers are saturated. You then begin to carefully massage the wool layers until the fibres begin to mat together.

Once you get to the point where you can pick up the piece, you turn it over and massage the back. Next you have to squeeze out as much water and soap as you can and by this stage there was soap lather everywhere!!!

 

The final stages involve rubbing the felted piece together in lots of different directions and it gradually become smaller and stronger. The last phase is squigging the felt into a ball and violently throwing it against the table or a wall, which after this week felt really destressing. Then all you need to do is rinse out all the soap with clean water and leave to dry. In 2 hours we all got to make 2 pieces of felt, I made a plain piece

and one with some decoration. It was really therapeutic and fun, but easy to do. Definately something to try.

Finally today, some pictures of me and the mother's naughty treat. We went to the local garden centre for tea and cake. The mother had a meringue nest with lots and cream and fruit

and I had keylime pie.

As you can tell the mother enjoyed her treat

;-)