Felt Folding with Andrea Noeske-Porada
FIBRES WEST 2017 is a residential program over five days and 6 nights at Muresk in Northam. Reputedly the coldest place in winter in Western Australia. Not that we noticed too much as we quickly became engrossed in learning felt folding origami type techniques with Andrea Noeske-Porada. A truly unique felting workshop experience with a dozen equally enthusiastic participants. Andrea’s technique of taking felt to another dimensional level requires some intense attention to detail. My cutting board is yet to recover as there was a lot of very precise cutting. As a result, my pieces below may not seem much for 5 days effort, but it is a technique that requires some thought and patience.
In order to understand the basic technique, we had some paper folding practice before embarking on complex projects. Making a Kaleidocycle is a fascinating exercise. Being a three-dimensional ring, it can continually turn inside out to reveal the different coloured facets. Making it is felt is therefore more challenging. One has to first convert wool fibre into a fabric, so it can be cut, reassembled and shrunk.
Most of all, it was a wonderful week of creativity with presentations by all the Fibres West tutors, as well as a trade hall, evening activities, installation artist and displays. Despite the wonderful distractions (including all meals), the results from my fellow participants speak for themselves. Click on images below to see larger images and the amazing variety of items.
I spent a very pleasant and creative weekend discovering the possibilities of creating felt jewellery and mini sculptural shapes. Martien van Zuilen’s ‘Sculpture and Jewellery on a Precious Scale’ workshop is full of ideas and techniques to make jewellery or components to add to other felting projects.