Following Rupert (Part 1)...

A small diversion from felting, and it's back to the day job...

Around this time of year I make a start on the artwork for the Followers of Rupert Annual get-together that takes place each summer. My pieces of artwork are used for all the printed matter for this weekend event - from T-shirts and badges, to programmes, menu cards, committee badges & lunch tickets. Here are some from previous years, click on the photos to enlarge…

I've already discussed ideas with Tony Griffin, the Annual organiser, and this year we're using one of Tony's favourite Alfred Bestall illustrations  "Rupert photographing The Chums" from the 1964 Annual. I've used it for the button badge design and now I'm drawing it up for the programme cover. I'm also using the 1964 cover as a starting point for the second piece of artwork.

 

I only draw Rupert once a year, and then just copy and re-work Alfred Bestall's existing illustrations. I start by working out a rough sketch for the new design and try and capture the style as best I can. It's not an exact copy as I have to alter and move various elements to fit the new A4 formats, plus leave space for headings & text. As you can see it's just pencil and rubber at this stage.

When I'm happy with this sketch I then trace it down, onto a smooth Fabriano watercolour paper, refine the pencil line and then ink in with Rotring pen line. The drawing is then coloured in using Dr Martins watercolour inks.  My colours are much brighter than the original, after all I'm copying an old printed book cover that is faded and discoloured with age. 

As a child I was bought up on Rupert annuals and they are very much a part of my visual memories. I have a sizeable collections of the old annuals going back to the 1930's and this particular 1964 annual was mine as a child. All the Magic Paintings have been done I'm afraid - and not very neatly - first steps towards a career in book illustration! Years later I studied AB's drawings & pen work with a different eye, marvelling at his imagination, skill and continuity in drawing Rupert for almost 40 years. I even wrote to him to tell him of my admiration, and received a very shaky reply, written on Boxing Day 1985 two weeks before he died. It's one of my most treasured possessions.  

With this particular cover the more you look into it, the more bizarre it seems, even for the 1960's!  Rupert rock climbing with The Chums, most unsuitably dressed in formal jackets & bowties, although Rupert is looking remarkably casual in his red 'sweatshirt' . Poor Edward Trunk just hasn't got the paws for climbing, nor has the Fish! But I love the colour and the elements of design - the elegant Japanese style trees, the blossom and the rock formations.

You might notice that my Rupert has a white head as opposed to the brown headed version on the 1964 cover. Why? Well Rupert and The Chums are traditionally drawn with white faces, hands and boots in all the story strips and incidental drawings throughout the annuals, and only appear completely coloured in on the covers & endsheets - so I've decided to keep them white in keeping with these drawings.  

These pieces of A/W will now be scanned before I send off the originals to the Followers. (They have been used as Raffle prizes in past years!) We will use the scanned images to create the designs for all the printed material, which will be put together in a couple of months time. With items like the committee & guest badges and the table place cards I will be handwriting all the names…  so I'll be practising my calligraphy! 

And you can catch up with the next stage of the production here

in the meantime there's more info' on the Followers of Rupert website and if you want to join the Followers there's a fantastic offer at the moment for new members - in the price of a year's membership you will get over £30 of extra Rupert goodies for FREE…

For more details contact the Membership Secretary : agriffog@btinternet.com           

Happy Birthday! Weavers, Spinners & Dyers...

The Isle of Wight Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers was founded in the 1980s by a group of like-minded people, who shared a common interest in these traditional crafts. This year the Island Guild is celebrating it's 30th Anniversary and has organised an exhibition of members' work at Ventnor Botanic Gardens taking place this week. "Twined Threads" is a marvellous display of hand-spun yarns, knitted & woven textiles, dyed fibres and felted designs as you can see here... 

Not being a spinner or weaver I felt a bit of an interloper when I first joined the Guild about 6 years ago, really as a way of keeping in touch with other feltmakers on the island - but I was made so welcome. It is a wonderful, friendly group and I really enjoy being amongst enthusiastic like-minded ladies, all sharing their amazing knowledge & skills. Monthly meetings are held at Rookley Village Hall and members enjoy a varied & interesting programme of events and workshops, covering all aspects of weaving, spinning & dyeing, plus related textile crafts such as feltmaking. 

  

Practical workshops are held regularly throughout the year and the Dyeing Days are a particular favourite. We all get-together, usually on a very hot summer's day and boil up pots of natural dyes over open fires. Brilliant coloured skeins are left hanging to dry in the trees and bushes, and ladies sit spinning in the shade waiting for the dyes to brew - it really is a magical day!  Not having hand-spun wool I take along small skeins of Jamieson's unbleached Shetland 2-ply to add to the dye pots and I now have a wonderful collection of natural dyed wools.

One of the highlights of the last couple of years was taking part in the Medina yurt project, which involved a number of schools and community groups island-wide. The Guild was invited to produce a 6ft square felt panel for the yurt and my design was chosen. We all worked together on this huge panel, making prefelts, cutting out and positioning the felt shapes onto layers of Blue Face Leicester fleece and finally rolling and felting it all together. A high percentage of Island fleece was used, all hand dyed by Chris Lines, the co-ordinator of the project and Guild member. It was great fun to be involved, hard work and an amazing achievement. Here are some photos and there's more if you follow this link …

The "Twined Threads" exhibition at Ventnor Botanic Gardens is on for this week, 1st - 6th May, in the Echium Room and if you are interested in textiles it's well worth a visit. Admission is free and it's open from 10 - 4pm each day. There will be Guild members on hand to give you more information... 

Merino Tops Fibre Packs… UPDATE!

The huge fibre order finally arrived a couple of days ago, but I hadn't quite appreciated just how bulky a 20+ kilo parcel would be! KC had to help the poor postman man-handle it up our very steep drive...

...But I was ordering for the summer workshops, including the children's Fibre Days, plus all the Merino tops needed to make up packs. And some for me… It was just like Christmas and my birthday, which coincidently happened to be a couple of days ago. It's been a week of parcels arriving!

And it's taken us several days to sort it all out, to put fibres aside for workshops, make up packs and store everything away. Fortunately KC is incredibly organised, as you can probably tell, but we did have to dash out for more storage boxes...

The original idea behind the packs was to be able to offer them at the workshops, enabling those who were keen, to continue making felt when they got home. Each pack contains enough coloured tops to make several sample pieces of flat felt (which can be made into a book cover or a purse). There's sufficent to make a bag or bowl, or lots of felt jewellery. I've had so many enquiries recently about the packs that I've decided to make them more widely available and sell them on-line. 

There are five packs with different colourways, as shown here : Pinks & Purples; Hot Reds & Oranges; Natural shades, including Blue Faced Leicester tops; Olive Greens & Browns and Aqua Blues & Lilacs. Each pack contains six different coloured lengths of Merino tops, each approx 36". Although the lengths are approximate the minimum weight of the total fibre is 100gms. There is also a 40gm sachet of grated olive oil soap in each pack. Everything you need to get going!

Some people who are new to feltmaking ask about the Merino Tops. Merino wool is one of the best for beginners as it felts very easily and is available in a wide range of colours. 'Tops' is a manufacturing term, describing fleece that has been cleaned, carded & processed so that all the fibres lay in the same direction, in a continuous rope-thick length that can easily be pulled out in tufts.

The packs are £6.00 each and are available to buy on-line through my Folksy shop, where you will find further details, and payments can be made via PayPal. If you do live on the Island you can always contact me direct : gc.felts@freeuk.com I can either post the packs to you or you can come and collect them...   

A Week of Workshops...

This week of workshops has certainly been a week of contrasts. I had a group of 6 year olds making pop-up cards on Monday afternoon, 10 year olds making Egyptian projects all day Wednesday and a group of ladies making felt on Thursday. 

The felt making took place at Dimbola Lodge as part of their season of taster workshops. I do wonder what Julia Margaret Cameron would have thought about these 'goings on' in her home. Our group of beginners were quite a snug fit in the upstairs room that used to be Julia's study, next door to her bedroom. I'm sure all the laughter and creative energy roused her spirit and she would have greatly approved. Dimbola has such a wonderful atmosphere and we're made so very welcome there, with great hospitality & home-made cakes! And such a lovely group of ladies, which made the day. All were experienced craft workers, just new to felting. Enthusiastic, amusing and really good company. All worked hard to produce lots of brilliant pieces of felt and there's more photos on my Flickr pages...

 

On Wednesday I was back in school with a class of 10 year olds. Several years ago I'd written a craft series called 'Art from the Past' and the Cat Mummys was a favourite project from the Egyptians book. This was a good opportunity to see how these children got on with making them…  And they loved it, especially the boys, transforming cardboard tubes and newspaper into cat mummy shapes. They left the glue to dry over lunch, then bandaged and painted them in the afternoon (probably a bit like the ancient Egyptians..?)

I don't know whether I might be driving my 6 year olds a bit hard on Monday afternoons, I did have tears from one little girl last week, but I thought I'd press on with pop-ups this week. Ben did complain that his Tiger didn't look much like mine… I tried to explain that I did have a slight 50 year advantage, but he wasn't convinced!

The common thread with all the workshops, whatever the age range, is the passing on of practical knowledge. I have always 'made things' - I've been very fortunate - it's been part of my upbringing and way of life, and it was my occupation as a writer & illustrator of children's craft books. Now these workshops are a new departure for me, putting knowledge into practice...

They're proving to be a great challenge, a little bit scary, but good fun!  

"Crafty Artists" at Ventnor...

Real life has a way of overtaking the virtual reality of the blog that is supposed to be recording it… if that makes sense? It's nearly three weeks since my last post, when I gave details of the new workshop dates, and they are almost all fully booked. I've been part of the "Crafty Artists" event at Ventnor Botanic Gardens over the past two weeks, plus I'm now running a craft club and workshops at my local schools in West Wight - it's all been rather a rush to prepare for everything...

The days at VBG have been really great fun, but the highlight of each day for me has been the spectacular drive along the coast road - I never tire of this drive - it's one of the pleasures of living on the Island. The weather has been beautiful, hazy pink mornings with the layers of the distant landscape ahead merging from the mist, just like a Japanese print. I couldn't help but think of the terrible tragedy on the other side of the world, when a sea as calm and benign as this could suddenly be whipped into such a destructive force. We seem safe here, but living so close to the sea one cannot help but think sombre thoughts…

The coast road precariously follows the cliff edge. The sheer chalk cliffs at Freshwater and the vivid blue sky and sea fill the rear view mirror. Passing the Dunsbury sheep grazing so close to the road I can see the dew sparkling on their backs. The tide is going out at Compton. It's the spring equinox, plus the moon is unusually close to the earth at the moment, so the tides are exceptionally low. 

I pass the beautiful Jersey herds at Brook, the alpacas at Chale, their coats steaming in the warmth of the sun and the workers in the vegetable fields, picking cabbages and sprouts. The road veers inland at Niton and follows the Undercliff to St Lawrence. Here bare branches are tinted green with faint Spring growth. There are daffodils everywhere along the verges and cherry blossom in the gardens.

This roller coast road not only twists and turns, but undulates from the constant filling in of surface cracks and potholes over the years, making it quite an exciting drive! There's one-way traffic signals and road works all along the way. The fragility of our island's life is well illustrated by this short drive of barely 16 miles, as coastal erosion will close this road very soon. But driving into the VBG car park the magnificent white and pink magnolia blossom is enough to lighten the mood!  

The days at the Botanic Gardens were a delight. The weather's always good at Ventnor - the camellias bloom weeks ahead of Freshwater.The Echium Room is a wonderful bright exhibition space. Lots of lovely people, both visitors and friends, came through the door and said we were a really interesting mix of crafty artists!!! 

And in the evening back at Freshwater KC & I couldn't resist taking advantage of the really low tides to wade out through the rock pools and explore the caves in the Bay. There won't be tides as low as this for many years to come...

More Bags & Bowls...

Another really exciting workshop on Saturday - the second "Design & Make a Bag" - with everyone working very hard to achieve these bags. For some it was only their second felting session and I think the results are remarkable and speak for themselves. Some of the bags may need a bit more felting and finishing... And although the workshops should have really finished at 4pm our enthusiasm carried us through until 5pm, by which time I had to call it a day. KC was knocking on the door to help pack away!

Here are this week's bags, plus some of the bowls previously made in the "Soft Pots & Bowls" workshop.



With so much bag making going on around me I just had to try out a design I'd been planning for a while. Several years ago I knitted this samplar bag on the left, using up lots of small skeins of natural dyed wools I'd accumulated over many dyeing sessions. I just love the shape, the tassels & the plaits, and have always wondered if it would work in felt.

The shape is similar, but that's about it - the finished result is of course a completely different animal. The feel of the bag is totally different, the 4 layers make it thick, chunky & warm ( I want to keep my hands in it!) The bold pattern & colour is typically felty. It's interesting to see what does/does not successfully translate into different media and I was pleased enough with my felt version to make a second. Again, KC my master plaiter made all the plaits for me.

I don't actually 'wear' many of my bags - I tend to hang them up at home. These remind me of quivers (def: a case to hold arrows) and I'm keeping my knitting needles in them… for now!

I think I may have gained some allies from the workshops. Everyone comments that felt making is physically tough, results don't come quick! My quiver bags each represent 6-8 hours work, including finishing & plaiting time. What price can one put on such things? That's why I'm keeping these... for now, but I will be making more in the weeks to come for sale, trying out some different colour variations and will bring them along to the various events this Spring...

 

 

Felt Hearts & Valentines... seeing red!

Wherever you look at the moment you can't help but see RED! Hearts, roses, ribbons, balloons everywhere, frantically signalling the approach of Valentines Day, encouraging us all to buy red...

However, on a much more subtle note, there's a great opportunity to see some wonderful Valentine Day cards that look back to past times. Tucked away at Dimbola Museum, Valentine cards from the Shell Art Collection are on display.

 A sweeter song, my Valentine, 1954, Ronald Ferris.  Copyright Shell Brands International AG, courtesy Shell Art Collection.

       The lark’s a-wing, my Valentine, 1955, Asgeir Scott.  Copyright Shell Brands International AG, courtesy Shell Art Collection.

 This is the hour, my Valentine, 1951, Claudia Freedman.  Copyright Shell Brands International AG, courtesy Shell Art Collection.

 At last you know, my Valentine, 1953, Leo Huskinson.  Copyright Shell Brands International AG, courtesy Shell Art Collection

...And hardly a red heart in sight, just charming designs reflecting a much more gentile era. Lady motorists in the 1930's were a rare commodity and those with accounts at Shell garages were nurtured! The tradition of sending the Shell Valentine card began in 1938 and continued right up until 1975, with 65,000 female customers receiving cards in 1950. All the cards were sent anonymously, but the shell imagery, the motoring themes and the familiar Shell slogan rounding off the verse were all a bit of a give-away!

Putting my "illustrator's" hat on for a moment - I just love the designs, the visual humour, together with the clever play on words in the verses. These were fantastic commissions, beautifully executed by some of the best commercial artists of the day. The printed cards have been treasured and have rightly become collectable. Some of my particular favourites are shown above - click on them to enlarge and you can read the verses. 

The earliest Valentine cards in the exhibition date back to the beginning of the 19th century. All the cards wonderfully reflect the tastes & attitudes of their time. The Victorians loved incorporating natural elements into their cards, dried flowers, leaves, feathers, hair and there's even a tiny bird pressed into one of the cards... Quite a feat (how did it fit in the envelope?) - certainly not acceptable in today's world!

This is a fascinating exhibition and well worth a visit, and it's on until the 17th March.   

I started making my Felt Heart brooches a couple of years ago, photographing them with old love letters to make images for Valentine cards. Some of these love letters date back to the 1850's, beautifully handwritten, folded into tiny envelopes with Victorian Penny Red stamps. Again, legacies of past times... 

My Felt Heart brooches and Valentine cards are all available to buy through my Folksy shop.

Hope yours is a Happy Valentine's Day!