I had a lovely day today in the studio at Duckett's Grove catching up with Eliska (on the left) and Zoryana, the temperature may have been cold but their bags are going to be HOT!
We hadn't met since Dawn's great 'Fantastic Felt Hat' workshop in Borris last year so as you can imagine we had a lot of catching up to do. Good friend Tanya, who I don't see very often, also called in for a chat complete with one of her friends and gorgeous puppy as did Christine, a super new felting recruit from Myshall. Liga popped in to say hi too and brought me back my felt from the Creative Carlow shop when it closed, if you don't know Liga's beautiful polymer clay jewellery you can check it out here on Etsy. I guess you could say it was a busy day at the studio!
Here's a picture of Zoryana's bag after the handles and flaps were cut, the turquoise swirls are hand spun banana fibre and there are blue and green silk hankies over both sides of the bag. Zoryana also included one glass marble in the bottom left hand corner but this won't be revealed until the bag is totally felted and fulled.
Eliska's bag has a black inside and a hot red outside. In this picture she's sealing all the cut edges, sometimes I work on this stage of the process for an hour, it might sound like a long time but it makes such a difference to the quality of the edges!
I'm heading to bed now as I've got to have my wits about me in the morning, I'll be starting a series of four workshops with 13 ladies in Carlow so want to be in top form and not tired and bleary eyed. Over the next few days I'll be posting updates about all my US workshops and Portugal, watch this space.
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Nicola Brown Fine Art Textiles 
It doesn’t seem possible that a year has flown by since my grand adventure in Ireland. Thanks so much for sharing the wonderful photos above…Such great memories of meeting Zoryana and Eliska….and all of the wonderful feltmakers with whom I had the pleasure of meeting during my stay. Thanks again so very much for having me Nicola.
Can’t wait to see you soon in Plainwell.
Making this style of one piece bag with strap just like playing magic. Lovely color.
Very clever pattern. Beautiful green, wish I had made it. LizSeville@wordpress.com Principally Felt