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

Spiritstore

Feltfieltrofilc

Nice Day Designs

Volunteers Please!!

At the last team meeting we talked lots about doing fairs and getting more involved as a group. So this led me to contact the Spiritstore project in Limerick City, the are running an event on the weekend of the 8-9th May, with lots of artists and performers all exhibiting work in one street. Because of the set-up that they have we are not allowed to sell items but they've asked the Etsy Ireland group to do a how-to class on the Saturday from 3.30-6.30pm. They've supplied a great indoor space right in the centre of the city, but we would need to supply materials. We can also set up a display area of things we have made, so we can advertise the team that way.

So I'm looking for people who will be around that weekend who would like to volunteer to do some simple workshops. I was thinking we might fit in a team meeting in the early afternoon too, to get what we are going to teach sorted...and also to have some yummy cake and coffee!

I really need to hear back from people on this as soon as possible please.