Dotty Textiles: Felt Workshop Hoops

I'm hopefully going to be starting some workshops in Brighton at a new gallery/workshop space that is opening up. It's called Pretty Neat Gallery and they are starting completely from scratch so things are taking a little longer than originally planned. I was meant to be doing some children's felt workshops in April but the gallery is now not going to be able to open until May so they have been postponed for now. I will let you know when they are back on again - it will hopefully be in line with the school holidays so that you can plan to do something fun with your young stitchers.

We are planning two workshops, one for slightly younger children to make a felt flower garden like this example hoop here that I whipped up one afternoon. It has since come in handy for a Brownie workshop which is good. They are really simple hoops, just using buttons to stitch on felt circles, a couple of stitches in the felt leaves and down the stems to hold them in place. It's only two or three stitches in total and a great place to start learning how to hand stitch - and to sew on a button!

I found this fantastic jumbo felt ric rac with one of my suppliers which is absolutely ideal for this workshop! It's a little bit fun, easy to stitch down, and it only came in green so I bought three rolls of it.

There's obviously a lot of blank space around the flowers and it's easily customisable. I've a blog post coming up at some point which is about the Brownie workshop that I've since held and they have some brilliant examples of how this design can totally change. Depending on their skill level you can add all sorts of things to the hoop, change up different stitches (I've used fly stitch and detached chain stitch in this example but the print outs everyone gets for the workshop only have running stitch and straight stitch to play with.) and adapt buttons into other creatures.

You could have four buttons (two bigger, two smaller) to make butterflies, a row of wiggly little buttons to be a caterpillar, a red button could become a butterfly.... You could even use a button as a sun and stitch rays around it. My little extra button has become a bee by stitching over the holes rather than just through them, creating stripes. I tried to also put a french knot eye and a stinger on my bee but I don't think they've worked all that well. The Brownies were suitably impressed which is fine.

I think it's really cute, what do you think? We can make this in two hours, it's fully customisable, teaches practical skills like sewing on a button and stitches you can use to repair to do simple stitching. It also promotes dexterity, patience, perseverance, design skills, colour play and just creativity in general. All packed into the one hoop!

At this age we ideally need an adult with each child so that class is going to be pitched as a pairs workshop with an adult and child to do together. It works really well and we've had some brilliant feedback from parents - even those not particularly creative. It's never too late to learn to sew on a button either - I'm happy to teach grown ups and little stitchers how to do that, no embarrassment or questions asked.

For the slightly older kids, who are likely to be able to thread needles by themselves, we've got some funky houses to make. Again it's using predominantly felt on a calico background, but there are more stitches involved and the design is a bit more up to them. I've got two house examples that I've made, and I'm creating templates to go with them if anyone wants to use them - I may also actually create a downloadable PDF for my Etsy shop to help anyone looking for things to do over the holidays.

This is my first design, which I've called the Tulip house as the roof shape kind of reminds me of an upside down tulip flower. It's really simple with that lovely felt ric rac as a hedge behind the house, a couple of simple stitched felt leaves and a slightly more complicated felt tree. I've stitched back stitch to give texture to the tree and I did use long straight stitches to make the trunk but that could easily be felt as well.

I've tried to show different ways of using the button holes to create different looks and have some fun with those, and I've given them little window boxes full of flowers made from french knots and detached chain stitches.

For this hoop I have used fly stitch, back stitch, french knots, detached chain stitch, running stitch, straight stitch and blanket stitch.

I've also made a Mushroom house! I don't know why - I was trying to make a house that looked a little less girly, but I'm not sure I've achieved less girliness with this one? I really love it though, especially with it's quirky front door.

My intention is to perhaps have templates for these two house shapes, but to encourage those in the workshop to make their own and be creative with the type and style of house.