Bears and hares

At last, I've finalised the project for my Oxford workshop at Hill End Nature Centre which I visited recently. As it's an all day workshop, I decided to go for something a little larger than normal, so the project is to be stumpy bears.

 

It's not a difficult pattern, but it will need the whole day and there is a choice of making a brown bear or a polar bear. As with all my workshops, the price per person is all inclusive of materials and use of tools. Details can be found on my workshops page. As I'm organising this all on my own (which feels a bit scary) I'm the contact for everything.

My new running hare design from my line of 'Flights of Fancy' range went to a new home last month.

 And now I've finished another - a white hare with violet grey Siamese points.

This one is adorned with twisted silver wire, natural pearls and smoky quartz teardrop beads and is on sale in my Etsy shop.

My Manchester Spring Bunnies workshop is at the end of the month, and we are almost full - just two places left! If you'd like to come to this one, please book directly through the Make It shop site here. They may look small and simple, but each one takes me about four - five hours to make. All that smoothing.

Now I've got to crack on with my April newsletter - if you'd like to see any of my previous newsletters, without subscribing, they can be found archived here. 

New best friends

I have had an unseemly amount of enjoyment with this new needle felting lark. I used to make a lot of things, which is why I have so much textile-y stuff gathering dust in corners of my studio, but I had to bite the bullet and concentrate on becoming a vaguely competent painter. However - being a typical Cancerian - I hung on to everything, as sewing paraphernalia tends to be beautiful as well as (eventually) useful. In fact - and I am somewhat horrified to count back the years - it has been about a decade since I crafted anything. This month I have other publishing work which must be completed, so grabbing a precious hour or two with my felting needle has been a very guilty pleasure, hence keeping the curious waiting for my initial efforts. As well as waiting for delivery of little ribbons with my logo on, which are obviously being hand embroidered by Mongolian elfs, they are taking so long to arrive.

My first tentative stabs were loosely based on an old artwork, Mr Apricot -

- he started off like this...



- and ended up like this. Amazingly after all these years of non-sewing, I can still just about embroider a nose and managed to make halfway decent French knots for eyes.



At this point Andy's mum should not be reading, as he is her (very late) birthday present. He was missing something though...and unexpectedly, the wonderfully kind and very wool-centric Border Tart sent me a gorgeous collection of bright fluffy 'accents', all wrapped up in a fairy tale.



Funnily enough, I had just been looking through her shop to see if she sold these self same articles. Thank you so much Lindsay! Now my rabbit has what every bunny needs; a carrot.






Many years of painting and drawing 2D toys means that I am not at a loss for designs...in fact I wish I could sprout extra limbs, in order to be able to work, spider-like, on several projects at once.

The next idea was unashamedly inspired by a story from a favourite childhood Enid Blyton book, (and from where many early ideas and images fixed themselves in my imagination, still resurfacing in my work today).

Using a cotton wool base, she started rather bizarrely; a miniature yeti-like creature.

But several thousand stabs later, a bit of embellishment and a pink heart on her posterior she emerged looking plumply cute and rather like a Japanese crafted toy.

Wanting to move back to a more vintage style, I ransacked my Moleskine again -

- and started to roll, mould and stab again. Using cotton wool in the kitten saved on actual felting wool, but I seem to get a more satisfactory, organic shape with 100% wool top. So far she is eyeless and wingless. Does she need a crown or a frock? Or both?

I find it hard to believe there was life before needle felt.