Category Archives: felt hat

Noody-what?

I am often asked what inspires the pieces I make, the truth is inspiration can strike anywhere, sometimes it is the materials themselves, the pattern on a piece of sari silk or the tassels on a charity-shop scarf for example. Nature is another great source, the textures of a patch of lichen or orange-crimson autumnal leaves against a bright blue sky. Memories from holidays or previous careers such as watching cells growing in a petri dish from my days as a “lab rat”.

As some of you may know, I used to SCUBA dive a lot and frequently draw inspiration for my felting from the underwater world, for my new collection I couldn’t resist the gloriously colourful world of nudiranchs (pronounced noo-dee-branks). I confess I have been slightly obsessed with these little sea slugs for more than 20 years but the usual response when I try to describe them to non-divers is, “noody-what?” Their name means naked gills in latin and refers to the fern-like gill structures you can often see sprouting from their backs.

I love them because they are so outrageously colourful and don’t seem to care who sees them strutting their stuff in the magical aquatic world. I can’t think of a better muse to create a fabulously colourful set of wearable art, deep down, who wouldn’t want to be a nudibranch? 🙂 If you google “nudibranch photos” you will get a taste of their fantastically beautiful world and the colours will be much less washed out than those in my photos.

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The Pink Dorid nudibranch was my muse for this hat and gloves set.

Now I just need to find a human who is as exuberant and fun-loving as a nudibranch to wear them…. 😉

Hat Fest

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Bridport Hat Festival has crept up on me, I have quite a few hats but, they are like shoes, you can never have too many! So this month I have been spending every spare moment making more stock and trying out some new ideas and developing some old favourites with a new twist…

The pink unicorn:

is a variant of the horned viking:

Finishing up some hats started in a workshop with Zsofia Marx:

Experimenting with wire and other inclusions between the layers of felt:

Adding flaps to give a new dimension:

Do you think I should leave this one white / cream or dye it? It feels quite anaemic sat next to all the others but maybe it is good to offer some neutral options for sale?

“Haturday” starts at 10 am Saturday 1st September 2018 in Bridport, Hampshire, UK. Check out this link for more information. If you are in the area please pay us a visit, its a free event with lots of live music and entertainment and of course I can be found with the International Feltmakers Association in the Arts Centre behind the main stage. Why not pay us a visit, try on a few hats for fun and have a giggle? 🙂

Hats with Zsofia Marx

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Last weekend was spent with the beautiful ladies of IFA region 2 in the New Forest and the delightful and generous Zsofia, Zsofia makes the most gorgeous and stylish hats, do check out her facebook page if you aren’t familiar with her work.

She shared some interesting techniques, some of which I confess I found alarming but everyone came away with a stunning hat, so clearly I need to be more open to the alternative ways of making felt. 🙂

If you get the opportunity, I highly recommend taking a workshop with her, she has a natural talent for shaping hats to suit different face shapes that is a true joy to watch.

I take my hat off to you Guildford!

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Wow, what a week! Last week saw the second module of my FDAD course at West Deam, it was an incredibly intense 6 days, I was a zombie by Wednesday but made it to the end and I am so glad I did, it was well worth it. I will post about that when I feel a bit more recovered!

I got back from West Dean on Friday afternoon and had to pack the car for an Etsy Local fair in Guildford, at the time I was so exhausted I questioned if I would make it through to the end of the fair but the wonderful people of Guildford carried me through with their fantastic sense of fun and laughter 🙂

A slightly smaller space than the last fair but it still attracted plenty of attention.

The people of Guildford really surprised me, I expected to sell a couple of my more conventional styled hats but it was the really quirky ones that everyone wanted to try on and buy!

The horned hat was very popular…

But the prize for the best reaction had to go to this gent’s youngest son, his delighted laughter when his daddy turned around to face him in the hat was the most endearing and honest response I could have wished for, his wonderful reaction had us all laughing along with him 🙂 And that is how the horned hat found its forever home! I hope to see it out and about around Guildford 🙂

Almost as soon as I put the alien hat on display to fill the spot vacated by the horned hat this lovely lady came along and snapped it up!

Well done Guildford, I was pleasantly surprised by your willingness to embrace the unconventional, I will bring more of my wacky hats next year! 🙂

Everybody was in such good spirits, there were a lot of conversations along the lines:

Friend 1: “Ooooh that’s lovely, I really like that”

Friend 2: “Oh no, that wouldn’t suit you at all!” while nudging me or giving hand signals to say, “could you put it aside, I will be back to buy it just as soon as Friend 1 can’t see me getting it for him/her”.

This was a very successful event and one I would gladly take part in again, the only snag is I have sold about 25% of my stock, I need to get making again! 🙂

Lastly (thank you for reading this far), the new dates for the FFS online classes have been posted on the FFS website, and I will be hosting a new class on making seamless felt bags, from small pouches to rucksacks, please check them out and drop me a line if you have any questions.

Hats, Shoes and Hangings

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It’s been a busy few weeks and with the holidays just a few weeks away it is only going to get busier! I have so much to share I’m not sure where to start…

There was the great shoe making workshop with Natalya Brahovetskya and the IFA region 12 ladies, led by Mandy Nash, they are such a cheerful and generous group I heartily recommend felting with them if you get the chance. I am also pretty chuffed with the ankle boots I made too, not sure about the blue laces but I have some purple ones on order.

I have already started the next pair of ankle boots and I’m planning a pair of knee high boots but I will save that for a later post…

I have been making some hats in preparation for the Christmas fairs, these were made from sheets of felt I made for other projects and never got round to using, the first is a flat cap

This one is reversible and uses some faux fur I found at Thread thanks to Kim of Flextiles for the free tickets 🙂 :

I finished a nuno felt collage that was started at a life drawing session at least a month ago, this piece measure approx 2 ft x 1.5 ft:

And of course I am still attending life drawing sessions although playing more with textiles than charcoal, this piece was charcoal and pastel:

I hope you are having fun with whatever textile endeavours you are following?

So Proud :)

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Peta Korb, one of my students from the last concertina hat class got in touch with some wonderful news. She won first prize in the Perth Royal Show for one of her gorgeous felted hats – how cool is that! I’m so proud I could burst! 🙂

Here is Peta’s prize winning hat:

Mad Hatting

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With the online Concertina Hat course in full swing (there have been some amazing hats already and we are barely into week 2 of the felting 🙂 ) I thought this would be a good opportunity to share a few of the hats I have been working on over the past few weeks.

Madeleine’s “mad” hat and next class announcement

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Madeleine from the last Concertina Hat Class forwarded some photos of her latest creation and it is so amazing I just had to share it with you! Her husband accused her of having “mad hatter virus” so she now has felters from around the world queuing up to catch her “disease”, myself included 🙂

There was such a wave of requests asking when the next class would run that we decided to bring it forward a couple of months. Registration is open now but due to my other commitments will close temporarily on Dec 30th and then reopen on Jan 27th. The course itself will run from the end of February through to the end of March, the specific dates, materials list and sign up form can be found on the Felting and Fiber Studio site:

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/classes/felted-concertina-hat-with-teri-berry/

Ruth has also put together an wonderful gallery of all the student works to date (thank you Ruth!), they really are incredible and worth a look 🙂

Felted Concertina Hat Gallery

Concertina Hat Class – Take 2

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I am feeling a little bit sad today, the second iteration of the concertina hat class has come to a close 🙁

It has been a fun 6 weeks with lots of lovely, creative, supportive, kind and talented felt-makers. I have thoroughly enjoyed watching them all progress through the tutorials, injecting their own personalities into each hat (how else do you explain the variety of hats they produced?). All the hats were amazing (and a few people branched out in vessels and lamp shades too) so I will let their photos speak for themselves. These are the photos from students who were happy to have them shared online, in no particular order….

Erin:

Karen:

Who has her own very good felting blog, lincinstitches

Jane:

“Hippy Gary”

Evelyn Davis of Storytelling Threads:

She has FB and a website where you can see more of her work – www.facebook.com/storytellingthreads/ and www.evelyndavis.co.nz

Kelly:

Emilia:

She also has a FB page where you can follow her work: https://www.facebook.com/emilia.ponomarev?fref=ts

Madeleine:

Jifke (better known on the FFS forum as Viltmaaraan):

Jifke also has a website: https://itfryskeskiepke.wordpress.com/

Didn’t they all do fantastically well? I am so proud of you all! 🙂

I was planning to run the next class in Spring 2017 but have just heard there are already more than 15 people on the waiting list so I expect we will run it a little earlier with registration opening at the end of January and the class running through March and early April. If you would like to receive early-bird updates of the next course dates please drop me line via the contact form on the right and I will add you to the mailing list.

Rainbow Hat

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This week, in between running the online concertina hat class, I have been working on a commission from New Calendonia, I confess I had to look up where that is, and turns out it is in the Pacific, off the east coast of Australia! I don’t think I could pick a location further away if I tried! 🙂

We have been making good use of the translator function offered by Etsy (my customer speaks French) and I think it is working well, but its a little bit nerve-wracking not knowing how much is getting lost in translation. She asked for a rainbow version of this hat:

This was the sketch I sent to check we were on the same wavelength:

I spent most of this weekend working on it and this is the finished hat, still drying:

The second concertina hat class is progressing really well, we have such a talented group of felt-makes I can’t wait to share some photos of their work with you, I am so proud of them all! 🙂

Finally, a word of caution for anyone selling to customers in Germany, I have been working with a customer in Germany to contest a DHL customs charge for nearly 50% the cost of the goods I sent her, it appears they have decided the UK is no longer a part of the EU and therefore, subject to customs fees. My customer is understandably angry and I am more than a little annoyed with the half-wits at Deutsche Post. If you are selling to Germany, you might want to forewarn your customers of this potential issue.

Update: Deutsche Post have acknowledged they made a mistake and said they will forward the parcel which is now more than a week late 🙁