This was the first workshop I gave in Australia! Needlefelting is not that well known there, so none of the participants had used felting needles before. And several of them had never even worked with fibre! But you would never have known it!

We began with a simple three-dimensional project in which an egg-shape was transformed into turtles, cats, and all manner of other beings. Special brought objects like shells, buttons, feathers and tiny mirrors were imaginatively incorporated into flat pieces.

In the afternoon we tackled creating a bower. Bower Birds construct elaborate structures to attract females. Our intent was to create a bower that would attract what we'd like to have in our lives. I provided pictures of a number of different shaped bowers (kindly supplied to me by Gerald Borgia, a world renowned Bower Bird expert) that helped inspire the truly magnificent results! The bowers combined the skills we'd practised during the morning session.

My sincere thanks to the owner of Past Times, Gay Epstein, and her assistant, Linda for all the work they did organizing and promoting this workshop.


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