9 November 2011, Ali Brown, "Needlefelt without the Teddy Bears"

I had no idea what to expect at last week’s meeting. I’m not a huge fan of felt, never enjoyed making it myself. However Ali was a great speaker! Despite a few technical problems she had lots to tell us and lots of lovely stuff to look at. She has an art background and is one of those artists who is not afraid to try new things. She also has a great website – www.heartfeltart.co.uk – do look at it and see!

Ali Brown
Cockerel

I am a great fan of chickens and found that this is a popular subject with many of us. Ali had some lovely needle felted chickens. They were incredibly simple but strong shapes and she uses as a background beautiful thick pieces of handmade felt, made from merino wool. Not content with lovely felted pieces she also had some hangings, with kantha type stitching on them.

Ali Brown
Colourful Cockerel

Sadly we weren’t able to see her sketchbooks; these were on the slideshow that we were only able to see later in small groups around the laptop. She is a big advocate of sketchbooks and as I am currently doing a sketchbook course I would have loved to have seen them and turned their pages.

A lovely speaker, lots to share with us, full of enthusiasm. And how does she stay so thin??

*************

We are always pleased to welcome visitors to our branch meetings. This month we were delighted to receive 9 visitors, including one from France and two Hamburg in South Africa. Bandlakazi and Novuyane and Jacky are all involved with the Keiskamma Trust and were in Oxford visiting one of our members. They hope to return to the UK next year, when we would be please for them to join us again. In the mean time, we hope that our other visitors will join us again a little sooner and a little more frequently than once a year.