Author Archives: Teri

Felt Connect 2025

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As I write, nearly a week has passed since the 18th Southern Hemisphere Felters’ Convergence drew to a close but that peculiar mix of exhaustion, elation and excitement I felt as I drove home still lingers. I’m buzzing with so many ideas and happy memories! 🙂

The Felters Convergence is usually (pandemics permitting) a biennial event organised by volunteers from Australia or New Zealand. It is an opportunity for antipodean felt-makers to gather and share their knowledge and ideas. This year it was held in the beautifully quaint and historic suburb of Parnell in Auckland, New Zealand.

Before we arrived we were invited to “bring your smile”, a common refrain for anyone attending a social event but this time there was a twist…. We were to arrive with a smile and leave with a smile…. a felted smile! 🙂

Christine Roxburgh and Jenny Forrester (our very talented and incredibly hard-working organisers) put together an amazing, fun-packed program over the 4 days we had together. At almost any given moment there were 3 to 4 different classes or talks taking place and if that wasn’t enough, there was a room full of traders selling all manner of fibres, fabrics and felting equipment and a fabulous felt exhibition to visit. They REALLY crammed a lot in to the 4 days!

A small selection of pieces in the exhibition:

As Christine explained at the opening dinner, the Felt Connect title was a nod to the underlying philosophy of Convergence where feltmakers from far and wide come together to not only share their knowledge and love of fibre arts but also where new connections and international friendships form.

We had just shy of 100 attendees, 30 of whom were visiting from Australia and one came all the way from the US! Our headline tutors were equally international with Nancy Ballesteros from Western Australia, Katia Mokeyeva from Vermont in the US and Jacqui Collins from New Zealand.

Nancy taught for 3 very full days, covering topics such as:

  • colour theory for fibre artists
  • making properly fulled but beautifully drape-able felt in the Art of Drape class
  • the saucily titled, “Hanky Panky” session where she suggested lots of different ways to incorporate silk hankies into your felt
  • the Natural Rhythms class where she shared how she uses Fibonacci’s design principles in conjunction with her colour theory lecture from day 1. This allowed us the perfect opportunity to put some of what we had learned from her colour theory talk into practice while exploring wet-wool layout techniques.

Our sessions with Katia were a technological leap forward for Convergence, having someone teach 100 felt-makers from a different continent was novel and gave us the chance to learn from an expert that most of us will never have the opportunity to meet in person.

An example of Katia’s “Sea Waves” technique from her website

Katia provided us with pre-recorded videos of her signature “Sea Waves” technique and answered our questions over a Zoom call. Jenny did an amazing job of bringing it all together and resolving the inevitable technical issues that required her to hold the speaker jack in the computer so the room full of keen students could hear Katia’s replies to their questions from half a world away.

After our online session with Katia we were set free to experiment with our new learnings in the main hall.

Jacqui provided 4 full days of teaching, her classes were so popular many of them were over-subscribed. She covered a wide range of topics including, how to:

  • felt a fedora style hat using alpaca fibre,
  • make a wet-felted necklace,
  • painting on silk
  • construct and hang 3D wall art

And of course then there was the army of more than 20 volunteer tutors who offered to share their knowledge, a technique or ideas on how to develop your own style in new directions. There really was something for everyone!

A raffle was held to raise seed money for Convergence 2027 and the prizes were drawn on the final day:

Photographer – Flo de Ruiter

The final gala dinner and fashion show was a hoot, with heartfelt closing speeches from Jenny and Christine followed by the very funny “Glitter Sisters” AKA Lynn Evans and Sharon Fergusson, who hosted the felt fashion show with more than 20 stunning creations paraded among the enthralled diners.

L to R: Lynn Evans, Jenny Forrester, Sharon Fergusson and Christine Roxburgh. Photographer – Flo de Ruiter
Just a few of the fabulous felted outfits on display in the fashion parade. Photographer – Margaret Joppa
Bernice Mitchell modelling one of the three outfits she presented during the parade. Photographer – Margaret Joppa

Attending a Felters Convergence has been on my bucket list since I first read about the 2015 event and 10 years later, I’m pleased to say, Felt Connect 2025 massively exceeded my very high expectations and was worth the 10 year wait! Now I am hooked and Adelaide 2027 can’t come around soon enough! 🙂

Thank you so much to everyone who attended, organised and / or volunteered at this event, you are all utterly marvellous!

Soap, Chooks and Distant Memories of Summer

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It’s funny how the time flies isn’t it? I feel like I have been crazy busy for months but when I stop and think what do I have to show for it, I’m stumped! I have been working on a piece for the IFA magazine, Felt Matters. Fingers crossed that will appear in the September issue but I can’t say too much about that before it is published….

There have been quite a few markets and spin-ins this month, which have been fun but not all that profitable, fingers crossed I do better at the next two, a pottery market in South Auckland and then Fibretron, one of the biggest fibre events in New Zealand….

I sold a few felted soaps at the Nathan Homestead market:

So I have been replacing some of that stock, first I needed to work out which soaps needed replacing:

Then to work…

A few of the finished soaps ready for the next market….

Not fibre related but we have two new chooks, a friend adopted a new dog and was struggling to manage so I agreed to add her two ladies (Thelma and Louise) to our flock of nine naughty chooks. I had hoped to keep them in a separate run and coop (alcatraz henitentiary) where they could all see each other for at least a couple of weeks. However, 3 of my girls decided the mountain of food in their troughs wasn’t enough, they wanted what the new girls were eating and broke into alcatraz. So I had to play prison guard and break up the fights, turns out one of my Red Shavers is a horrible bully, she’s been threatened with the pot a few times.

Thelma and Louise in the henitentiary

Thelma and Louise are still sleeping and laying in the henitentiary but are allowed to free range during the day. For the most part they are hanging out away from my original flock but every now and then I have to break up the squabbles and chase the naughty bully away.

In between chook chasing I have started work on a crochet shawl using some hand-spun art yarn, can you see the shells and glass beads? It was spun form some of the pina colada blend I have for sale, it contains pineapple fibre and reminds me of summers on the beach. A distant memory in the depths of a New Zealand winter!