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Felt Matters | The Podcast, Season 1 Episode three

We’re all felting enthusiasts, aren’t we? And let’s face it, it’s such fun to keep fresh, to back up our knowledge and have a few new facts up our sleeves. This is what Felt on the Shelf is all about…a little bit of helpful direction when most needed.
I love a good felting book. Flipping through all the glossy pictures, I imagine felting the illustrated projects. When Heather and I started to plan the Felt Matters podcast, we knew we’d want to share our favourite writings about wool too; mine in felting books and Heather’s in articles from our Journal’s archives.
Here are some photos of my first Felt on The Shelf chat. As you can see, I have a mixed bag of felting books, bought when out and about, at conferences abroad, workshops with international tutors, the Hungarian World Felt Symposium and from online bookshops. That’s why I have books in Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese, Hungarian, German and English…and this was before Google Translate!
Good illustrations speak volumes, and I taught myself so many things from my books. How to felt sleeveless tunics, how to calculate shrinkage for wet-felted suits and how to make gorgeous wet felted toys. By poring over pictures of felt by artists from other cultures, and wonderful large scarf designs in Holland, I could create beautiful colour combinations for my own work.
A recent book to catch my attention is the British Wool for Feltmaking book. For the first time in a wool fibre analysis, wet and dry felting stand side by side as equals with sections dedicated to Fine, Medium and Coarse wool fibres. Perhaps this notion could be applied to other nations’ wool categories or maybe it is already. There are lots of visuals of fibre, and some great stories and tips right at my fingertips in this book. The Glossary alone gave me the meaning of words I had so often heard but was a little vague about such as Hog, Gimmel, Guard and Kemp.
I expect a lot from my few felting books and I rave about this book because it’s easy to dip in and out of, get an instant idea and try it out for myself. I love exploring natural fleeces and work a lot with raw fibre from my locality. It’s good to be daring and try a new breed, making each felt piece unique by blending a new fibre blended with an old favourite.
In fact, I’ve needle felted this little dog and the hares with natural fibres inspired by this book. It just shows…even thirty years into my felting career I can still add to my fibre knowledge with a quick dip into a book such as this.
We hope our love of learning about felt comes through in our Podcast, and inspires you too.

Felt Matters | The Podcast is available on our YouTube Channel, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

British Wool For Feltmaking is a team effort by members of the International Feltmakers Association, published by The Crowood Press

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Happy delving, page flipping and felting.

Article by Vivienne Morpeth Region 10 with Heather Potten Region 13