Our felting group recently hosted a Teapot Totem workshop with the excellent teacher and artist Pam Mac Gregor from USA. Needless to say TREES feature very strongly in my life, so I picked a Boab tree as my personal totem. At the end of the class I was left pondering the question “Is it a teapot or is it a Boab tree?” Neither was my final answer, I think instead it morphed into a deer “tree” standing in a mossy forest. That imagery was from my life on another continent over 30 years ago, amazing how strong childhood experiences are held in the body….. oh well, at least I managed to create some kind of ‘tree’ totem.
We used Finn Wool, a very hard felting, strong wool. Quite a different experience to my normal superfine merino wool. On a learning note, the devore silk velvet I added for surface texture did not stay in place well because we were only rubbing the felt not rolling. I decided to stitch the edges down, which did the trick until further down the track when more fibres migrated through to hold the velvet.