Flax Flower Project – Titanic Belfast

The Flax Flower Project – 1st July 2025 at the Titanic Museum in Belfast, running until September.
Part 1
Background
At the end of April, I received an e-mail from Cheryl Ferguson, the events programming manager at the Titanic Belfast. Cheryl was looking for someone to create an installation for display in the Atrium of the Titanic Museum. The museum was particularly interested in commissioning a craft-maker or artist from Northern Ireland. The overall idea was to have some large flax flowers hanging in the Atrium to celebrate the significant role of flax and linen production in the growth and development of Belfast. Cheryl had seen some of my large, felted flowers on my Facebook page FeltingCrazy and wondered if it was possible to create ‘flax’ flowers in wool. After some discussion, I realised it was going to be a big project, involving the making of a large number of flowers. Not wishing to let this great opportunity to promote feltmaking pass, I contacted my fellow IFA Region 14 coordinator, Jane Fox. We talked it over and decided to put out a request for other feltmakers to become involved.
Planning
We had a very positive response from feltmakers all over the island of Ireland, and from one based in Portugal. We ended up with the total of twelve volunteers. They were all experienced fibre artists drawn from three key groups: the International Feltmakers Association, Feltmakers North and Feltmakers Ireland. We had until 30th June to complete our task.
I drew up three designs – a very large single bloom about 85 cm in diameter, a medium- sized flower of approximately 45 cm, and a 90cm ring of nine small blooms. All of these would be suspended from the ceiling of the Atrium – to be viewed primarily from below. I then costed the materials, using the excellent company ‘World of Wool’ – who are still happy to do postal deliveries here! Costing labour would have taken this project beyond the available budget, so it was agreed it would be done on a voluntary basis.
Jane set up a Zoom meeting with volunteers to discuss what each would be able to produce and created a WhatsApp group for ease of communication.
It was going to be difficult for everybody to create the really large flowers due to postage and delivery issues. So, the other volunteers agreed to create the medium-sized and small flowers, and I was happy to create five of the large flowers, as well as some other pieces.
I created a prototype for each design and delivered them to Cheryl. We then discussed adding some loose flax fibres to the top of the flowers to disguise the mountings, and also using spun flax fibres to suspend the flowers. This material was sourced from Mallon Flax Farm in Moneymore. The idea was to maximise the amount of flax present in its own celebration! The museum also had some lengths of linen that could be hung amongst the flowers to show the journey of linen from flower to stem to fibre then finally to fabric.
The team
We initially had sixteen volunteers, but due to family and work commitments we ended up with a core of twelve, including myself:
Shelley Steele, Jane Fox, Laura Moffett, Jacki Sleator and Fiona Whyte – all current or former members of the IFA.
Sharon Bell and Elaine McCombe of FeltMakers North
Loli Cox, Marie Hopkins, Siobhan Healy Ryan, Viktor Hurtovyi and Lidiia Necheporenko of Feltmakers Ireland.
Training and creating
As I had experience of making large felt flowers it was decided that I should do an online workshop for the other volunteers. I demonstrated the patterns for each of the flowers and how to blend the colours to match – as closely as possible – the blue of the flax flower.
Our materials were: three colours of Merino roving (Cornflower Blue, Hyacinth, and Lichen), two colours of bamboo fibre (Isabella and Francesca), and flax top in lilac. It was considered essential to include this in our flowers. I also used Merino pre-felt in Sky to aid laying out the large flowers. Some other makers chose to use it for the smaller flowers too. A bulk order went off to WOW, with a few makers buying directly. The suppliers were prompt in their delivery, so I was able to post out packs to those who wanted them.
The technique was a typical wet felting technique involving rubbing, rolling, shaping and fulling. The main issue was making the flowers stiff enough to hang without drooping, and robust enough to withstand storage and re-hanging the following year. The stamens were fashioned from thin wire with a felted “bud” at the end – or beads for many of the smaller flowers
We experimented with different fabric stiffeners, in the end settling on ‘Hi-Tack’ using a high concentration. The flowers were then mounted on copper wire florists’ rings.
Sewing day
With the posting of some materials presenting some challenges, we decided that the flowers should be sent to or collected by Jane and myself by 23rd June. We booked a sewing day at the museum on 26th to attach flowers to rings as required and to add the linen cord for hanging. Four of us, Jane, Jacki, Loli and I, had a companionable morning doing this. Our only concern at this stage of production was that postal delay meant that Fiona’s flowers had not yet arrived from Portugal. Final delivery time of the finished flowers to the museum was scheduled as 30th June before 7pm so that they can be hung in time for the opening the following morning.