Sea Life School Felt Project

 I recently worked with two Year 6 classes (11 year olds) and two Year 2 classes (7 year olds) at a local Primary School. We decided to do sea life since their school logo is two dolphins.

One Year 2 class dyed prefelt with Kool Aid ...

                                                                                                                                                                  Whilst the other Year 2 class made some lovely textured pre felts....

One Year 6 class made sea anemones / coral ...

                                                                                                                                                                     
And the other class made tropical fish...

       

         





















The Year 2 children then spent a day putting it all together.

They made the dolphins...

                                                                                                                                                            They then worked in groups to lay down the background using wool tops on a layer of blue prefelt ...

They cut the prefelts they had made into seaweed, coral, a couple of jellyfish and starfish.  Each child had already used their prefelt to cut out a small fish to be used in some shoals of fish.

And then they positioned everything - which did prove difficult since there was so much to fit on!

It was almost complete in the above photo - there were still two jellyfish and some shoals of fish to squeeze in!

Once everyone was happy there was a lot of rubbing to do - which luckily the children usually really enjoy - especially the wetting out bit.

After the rubbing and some rolling it measured around 110cm by 160cm which was just right for mounting on a 1 metre by 1 and a half metre canvas.

Here are the two dolphins ...

And here it is in it's new home...

                               


































I think the children did a brilliant job. They also made something for themselves - either a jelly fish or a tropical fish.

Pippin thought it was great!

And she like's her new jellyfish friend!

Felting at Manchester Mega Mela 2014

Last year I did Rangooli patterns in felt -  here are a few of the ones that were made by the children...

but it got so busy that this year I thought we'd do something a little bit quicker and the quickest activity I could think of was felt bangles.

The children picked their own colours and made something a little like this.

They sprinkled it with soapy water, pressing down gently (!) to make sure the water was distributed.

They rolled it a little on the bubble wrap.

Before rolling it between their hands until it was felted.

Another photo, this time with her Auntie's bangle too.

It was s good activity for all ages - the smallest bangle here was made by a 2 year old ( with a little help!).

It was good to see children I'd seen last year come back for more felting fun ....

....and last year!

Kandinsky School Felt Project

Recently I worked with a class of Year 6 children - the theme was Keeping in Shape and they wanted to use Kandinsky's 'Concentric Circles' as inspiration.

They did some lovely drawings using pastels with their teacher and then they used Kap merino to replicate their designs in felt.

Here are the children's squares ready to be felted together.

The children made one square for the communal piece....

and one square which they fully felted to take home....

We laid the squares on a purple prefelt backing and the children created a border.

The children enjoyed wetting the piece before quite a bit of rubbing - which got very soapy!

and then lots of rolling...

Once finished they enjoyed finding their squares.

I then mounted their lovely work on a canvas which Pippin thought would make a great rug...

... she had to make do with a sample I had done for the project.

(The above sample was made using Kool Aid and prefelt which did work well but the teacher really wanted to use wool having enjoyed making Viking friendship bracelets about five years ago when my son was in her class).

It's now on one of her favourite spots - the windowsill.

She loves it!