Monday 10 May 2010

Etsy Ireland Craft Workshop

This weekend Etsy Ireland took part in the Spiritstore Cat Dig event in Limerick City, from Friday to Sunday the was a great mix of free culural events from music to street art, dance performance, political discissions, and workshops. On Saturday in Faber Studios team members Nice Day Designs and Feltfeiltrofilc (myself and Kate) held a craft workshop from 3.30 to 6.30. To be honest I had no idea what to expect, I had visions of either 30 people demanding a full professional class, or an empty room...the reality was somewhere in the middle thankfully.
Kate showed people how she creates her beautiful felt creations, she brought in her spinning machine, and also kneeded the felt together. She helped people make their own felt flowers and showed them how much work goes into each of her amazing pieces. People were really facinated to see the process behind this tradional craft, and for the whole day there was a bunch of people at her table asking lots of questions.
I prepared two things, one was a very informal brooch making class, providing people with lots of scraps of material, ribbon, lace, beads, buttons and felt. Showing them how I make my brooches and giving them some ideas of what they could do. This was really successful as people loved coming in and being able to make something for themselves, there was lots of ladies with colourful brooches in the pub that night! I had also prepared some clothes to be customised, but since this meant I was behind the sewing machine it didn't work so well, after about 15 minutes I abandoned it and went back to basic sewing. I was really satisfying to see people enjoying it so much, and I also got to teach a little boy how to sew, his future wife will thank me!

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to Kate for volunteering and being so giving with her time, my friend Cecily for being an extra pair of hands, Meg Kenny for being so lovely and helping with the teaching too. Lastly to the organisers who put in months of work for free to put together the weekend, it was really magical and it made the city shine!
Links

10 comments:

  1. what a fantastic time, everyone looks really into it!!

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  2. how fun! looks like the kids kept you two busy.

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  3. Knowing Kate she made everyone want to start felting! Her fascination with felt and enthusiasm is contagious! Great work ladies!

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  4. Brilliant work and well done to you both for getting out there and taking the time to showcase your skills! Give yourselves a big pat on the back.
    :o)

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  5. Brilliant to see these great craft events happening in my hometown! Wish I could have been there:)

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  6. I'm really dissapointed that we didn't know about this.We were watching Kate in the market satuday morning demonstrating her felting techniques and really fancied having a go

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  7. Sounds like a great event and lots of fun! Well done to all of you!

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  8. A great big Thank You to Ruth for organizing her craft demo, we had loads of fun!! Meg

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  9. Looks like you had a great day and so did the "students". Well done to you both.
    Mo

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  10. Thanks for all your lovely comments! Yep it really was a blast alright, I'd love to do it again soon

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