IFA’s Felt conference in Swansea, England, March-April 2007.

It was an exiting and very well organized conference with 5 different workshops, 4 exhibitions and talks by a Mongolian group.

The arrangement took place at the campus in Swansea, where we also stayed in the students rooms. Even though it was very old and “used”, it was very exiting to feel the atmosphere in that special milieu, where also other groups had conferences.

All the participants attended 5 workshops and as more people than expected had signed for the conference there were 20 participants in each workshop. Each workshop lasted 3½ hour, so for the teachers we had to be very careful to get through the planned program in time. I succeeded all 5 times but I also had very eager and good students.

The 4 teachers were:

Clair Diprose who taught Landscape felting (Seeing is believing). .

Liz Clay who taught in making a little felted book, comparing the similarity between hand felting and papermaking.

May Jakobsen Hvistendahl who taught in 1) Hat felting 2) and felting a little jacket to get the right fit and to learn making pockets and collars.

Birgitte Krag Hansen who taught in needle felted theatre figures.

In the meeting room there were different exhibitions.

Eva Basile had brought an exhibition from an Italian felt project with very different and exiting things.

The Mongolian group had also brought an exhibition with very beautiful and well worked things so I had to buy a pair of traditional slippers with up pointing toes. Luckily they sold good . They had had many difficulties to get visas plus other difficulties to get to the coference.

The third exhibition was the participant’s and many had brought things -that they could place on the big wall sheets meant for that. Here were really many impressing and exiting things.

The things that were made for the participants competition were also exhibited in the meetingroom the last day, and it showed up to be a genius idea to let the Egypt exhibition be the inspiration because it was very interesting things that were made: Vessels, hieroglyphs and things with beautiful patterns e.g.

There was also a little exhibition in a gallery shop on the area: “For fingers and thumb”. Funny and fine little exhibition with felted gloves, that were little art pieces that told each their own story.