There is something about baskets filled with colorful wool roving that pulls you right in and the first three students who showed up this morning could not resist immediately putting their hands all over the wool and touching each one.
For me, when I see a basket full of colorful roving it's just like opening a new box of crayons when I was little. I just can't wait to use each and every one and my creative mind is immediately sparked and ready to work.
And it seemed to have the same effect on the kids who showed up for the workshop today too.
Here are a few of the works in progress. They first put a layer of roving across the freezer bag in a vertical direction. I told them to make sure to keep their design small enough to finally fit inside the bag.
ocean scene
seal in ocean
"fudge" beloved teddy bear of artist
The second layer of wool roving goes on horizontally and the students then started thinking of what colors they wanted for the background. Those students doing ocean scenes choose "water colors", the students with outdoor scenes choose blue for sky and green for grass, and the artist who did her teddy bear choose two different colors to give a horizon line.
The third layer is where all the fun begins as they can now add the picture. It doesn't matter what direction the roving goes since they have created the two foundation layers.
Then the challenge of getting it into the baggie.....most did this without issue but a few needed to do a little touch up work once they got the work into the bag.
I then add hot water (not too hot that it might burn them!) with a drop or two of Dawn dish soap mixed into it. I pour a bit into each bag and pat down the roving until it is all wet.
Then gently push out all the water that did not get absorbed by the wool out of the bag onto a towel, push out the air and seal the bag.
Good thing I decided to do the felting in the baggies since I had one student in a cast that could not get too wet!!! The baggie keeps the room relatively dry, minus the damp towels when you release the excess water at the beginning.
Now time to work.
First the students "massage" the baggie to get the roving to start to stick together. This just takes a minute or two and once that is done, they roll the baggie up like a rolling pin. And then as if rolling out a pie crust, roll it back and forth twenty times. Unroll it, straighten out the felt as needed, give the baggie a quarter turn and repeat.
They did this until the baggie had been turned completely around, then flipped it and did the process again.
At this point, I let them pull it out of the bag so they could observe the changes happening in the wool. It wasn't quite felt yet, but well on it's way. They were quite amazed that something that started so fluffy could become so dense and shrink!
This was also an opportunity to add more roving for the couple who had developed a hole in their work.
Then we put them back into the baggies and started the process all over again.
By this point, most felts were done. I then rinsed them out in warm water, then cold water, wrung them out and had the kids roll them up in a towel to dry them even more.
Tada! Their final works of art in felt.
"FUDGE" 9 year old
Octopus, 8 year old
My pet dog, 7 year old
outdoor scene, 9 year old
Seal, 8 year old
red bird, 10 year old
There are still two more weeks in the Young Creative ARTelier workshops. Next week is printmaking and the following week we will be creating LARGE paintings. You can register through the North Vancouver Community Arts Council. The classes are a great deal! $25.00 per class for two hours on Sunday morning- 10am-12.
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