Barbara Schutzgruber – Storyteller & Weaver

Winter – Fool’s Spring – Second Winter – Spring of Deception – Third Winter
Mud Season – Actual Spring

In Michigan the months of February and March are a roller coaster when it comes to weather as Winter grudgingly gives way to Spring in 7 stages filled with snow, rain, ice, back to snow, more rain, another ice storm… until finally the green buds of snowdrops made their appearance signaling Spring just might actually arrive!

The February workshop “A Posy of Felted Flowers” with Patricia M Greaves for the OnLine Guild of the Association of Guilds of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers was just the ticket to withstand the rollercoaster of weather outside my window as I learned new felting techniques to create a bouquet of flowers.

“In this workshop we will explore a variety of ways of making flowers through hand felting – mainly traditional wet felt making, but needle felting can be used for further embellishment when the pieces are dry. We will be exploring ‘real’ flowers and their structure and colours, with the aim of producing a naturalistic or ‘fantastic’ bunch of flowers by the end of the workshop.” –PMGreaves

The workshop was done completely via written instructions and photos. Patricia’s explanations were clear, her photos provided detailed images for reference and I was pleased with my first attempt.

For my next pass I wanted to try getting the stems thinner which I succeed in doing but these were too flimsy to support their blossoms. With stems being too thick, then too thin, hopefully my next ones will be ‘just right’!

The blossoms were also a combination of success and needs some more work. My pansy/morning glory blossom came out pretty good but my daffodil and rose bud not so much. There wasn’t much I could do change the rose bud but if I added a brown center to my daffodil it becomes a Brown-eyed Susan.

With the snowdrops beginning to peak through the melting snow I was inspired to give them a try.

My final flower was an experiment felting wool fibers around florist wire to give thin stems the strength to support the blossom yet still allow the stem to be felted to the blossom, AND to make a double blossom. This one was very successful!!

Now it was time to think about how display my fanciful flowers
as I await the arrival of Actual Spring!