Felt Making in Dorking

Where did last week go?!

Oh well, I had a great day out yesterday.  I went to another one of my favourite towns, Dorking, for a felt bag making course.  Such fun!  I was quite surprised at how much hard work wet felt making is.  If you want toned up arms believe me this is the way to go.

Dorking is a lovely town in Surrey which is well known for it's antique shops but it also has many little boutiquey shops.  I didn't have time to do any looking around this time but two of my usual haunts (apart from the fab clothes shops) are the Wow! Gallery which has a lot of superb British craftwork as well as international and the Quilt Room, a quilting shop which is probably too traditional for me but still worth a visit.  There is also the vineyard, Denbies, just outside the town which has many good art and craft exhibitions which I will probably blog about in the future.

Back to the course.  The felting course is given by Gillian Harris who has a wonderful shop called the Fluff-a-Torium and she gives the courses in the room upstairs.  As well as felt bag making courses she also gives many other felt courses such as hats, jewellery and shoes.

This is the bag I made which you can see is totally reversible (I made felt handles which haven't been attached yet).  Unfortunately I made it a bit thick so it is too heavy but I might do a bit of sewing magic on it and see what I can do with it because I really like the colours that I used.  It might have to be just one sided though.

Here are examples of the types of shoes you can make on Gillian's shoe making course. Aren't they fun.

Gillian used to be a graphic designer and you can see that in the design and presentation of her shop and all her felting kits and goodies and her fun website.

Oh dear, not another skill I want to add to my ever growing list of crafty endeavours!