Jenny Pepper work shop

Once again I venture over to Hutton Buscel, outside Scarborough, to create some fantastic felt. This time, Spiky vessels, and after an early start I am raring to go. The old school house we work is is beautiful with the sun shining through the picture window. Where on the window sill sits a rainbow of merino wool tops.

After a welcome cup of coffee we made a start. Jenny, if you have not been to one of her course before, is a fantastic teacher. She explains the techniques really well and has samples to tempt your creative brain cells. By the time she had gone through the first stages we were raring to go. Spikes were the first order of the day, trying out different techniques to create different effects. I decided to try long ones and was inspired more when Jenny mentioned that if you knot them they will dried curled. After spikes we prepared pre-felt ready for the afternoon session where we would create the body of the pot.

Jenny encouraged us to try out different techniques, so I decided to try out all of them. As you are aware of, if you read my blog, I love seed pods. So I decided to take inspiration from them, but use different colours. So I went for a greeny-blue / grey-blue colour scheme.We used the resist method to build a 2 colour pot, and it was fascinating that after being given the same instructions, how different our pots were beginning to look. A lot of elbow grease, rubbing, layering and a couple of mistakes, my pot was beginning to take shape.

I added to my pot the spikes, created dangly spikes and a variety of spots that would be cut into to reveal an inner layer or be cut right through later. Coffee break and more rubbing with some rolling before we began to cut into the pots to remove the resist. It never ceases to amaze me how different it looks from a flat piece of work to a 3D pot.

So after sorting out the holes and shape we had a look at what everyone had done. The work was fantastic and everyone had created a unique piece of work. Here is my finished piece, at the end of the day, and some other pots.

(Others work)