What is Felting? 

Felting is one of the oldest forms of textile art. It  involves matting, condensing, and pressing woolen fibers together either by the use of fine barbed needles (needle felting) or by a rubbing soaped wool roving (wet felting). Either technique results in fabulous whimsical and functional creations.

Our Youth Workshop 3rd - 8th grade

Youth learn the incredible flexibility of wet and needle felting in this specialty crafting workshop.  Camp will begin with an introduction to needle felting basics.  Subsequent days will have specialty workshops to create felted soap, wet felted landscapes, 3-D animals, and wearable art.  Free time is provided to apply new skills in individualized projects with the support of tailored instruction to make each project a success.

Completed Projects to bring home:

• Needle felted owl
• Wet felted soap
• Wet felted landscape, floral, or abstract wall hanging
• Wearable felted art pin
• Longer term project: animal of your choice, doll's head and body, mushroom paperweight

 

Skills Required for the Camp

• Patience - felting is labor intensive and sometime tedious at the initial stages of a project.
• Fine motor skills - needle felting, in particular, requires subtle differences in poking, prodding, and tucking with a fine tipped needle
• Pain tolerance - Yup! Needle felting involves poking hundreds of times with a very sharp needle on wool being help by the opposite hand.  Obviously, this leads to a few unexpected painful pokes. Safety strategies are taught, but pokes are to be expected and bandaids will be plentiful

Felting Camp Location/Schedule

Camp instruction is provided in the community room of World Ground Coffee Shop, just down the street from Onstage from 9:00-1:00. Here we will feast on morning pastries with tea, felt, chat and inspire one another. Daily breaks will be taken in Onstage's popular aerial gym room. Optional swimming field trips are available from 1:00 -4:00. (Miniature golfing or bowling are alternatives if weather does no permit swimming)

 Your Instructor:

Marielle Cammarata, an Onstage owner and Director of Homebase, Onstage's After school program, is a crafting maven. She became addicting to felting over eight years ago from a simple kit purchased at a Maker's Fair.  Since then she has made more whimsical needle felted creatures than can be counted.  Every project completely delights her, especially when the creatures take on a personality of their own.  Marielle can't wait to share this with youth who are especially excited to discover of what  felting brings to creativity.

Samples of Marielle's work:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home Kit Provided in cost of the Camp:

• Felting Pad
• Basic 3 Needle Sampler
• Core wool