Arts in Education
Wool and Felt Curriculum with Sue Ellen Ripley
Handmade felt is a wonderful tool for students. In traditional feltmaking using water and soap, wool can be transformed into an astounding variety of projects from puppets and sculpture to murals and maps.
Traditional felt classes are wet messy fun, but with a proper site and lots of towels, everyone enjoys it. The materials and tools are simple and readily available, and the techniques are easily learned so that all who apply themselves succeed.
I also teach modern felt techniques such as needle felting for design, embellishment and sculpture, and nuno felting, which fuses wool to an open weave silk or gauze to create felted yardage or lightweight felt.
One thing makes felt especially nice for teachers! Although the wet projects must occupy some space for the duration of our classes, the students can walk away from them at virtually any step in the process. This makes felting very forgiving of time frames and interruptions.
Every class begins with a talk and a demonstration to introduce felt and show how the artist makes felt from wool. I show posters from my farm of the process from sheep to finished art and demonstrate the equipment used from drum carding to spinning wheel. I can teach how to make and use a drop spindle from recycled materials.
The first step is for each student to make a felt ball. This hands-on approach shows how felt feels, looks, and gives an idea of how long it takes for this transformation. This step also applies to looking for fleece to buy for felting---if a small piece of fleece dipped in hot soapy water can form a felt ball in a couple of minutes or less, it is a good felting fleece.
The next step is to learn about good felting design and to try making prefelt and/or needle felting. They learn what is necessary to translate design from paper to felt. For help with designs we use a variety of reference material and lessons on shapes and the basic principles of art and design for murals.
Finally, students work on the group project on the floor or tabletops, or individual projects on trays or foam slabs. Groups can be as many as 30 or as few as 5 for murals, but the teacher and I find ways to stagger the number working on a single piece by forming teams and work stations for assembling parts of the whole.
When we work with needle felting, done with dry wool roving and barbed needles, we take special precautions because the felting needles are sharp and brittle. Students love using the needles, done by stabbing the barbs repeatedly into a bed of wool fiber for either 2-D design work or 3-D wool and wire sculpture.
Needles are signed out individually and we practice safe needle hygiene and sterilize them between uses. I teach the technique with all safety measures noted before allowing students to use needles. This style of felting is appropriate for age 10 and above.
The idea is to keep every student actively engaged. Special needs students must be noted prior to the first class, and large groups can be staggered as necessary to assure that I can oversee the action. A great way to handle a group well is to have me train staff before the students, so there are skilled people to help with the project both during the residency and for future projects. I also like to use successful students to mentor others, as long as they have completed their own tasks. As long as we plan and work together, I am very flexible, as is felt.
Wool and felt can support many types of curriculum standards:
- Math - measuring, estimating, prediction, sizing, counting and pattern making.
- Language Arts - vocabulary and spelling, historical phrases and word origins, following written directions and understanding the steps in a cumulative process.
- Science - making solutions, recording results, experimenting and repeating the steps learned for a given result, dyeing, mordents, and the felting process.
- English and Literature - creating characters from literature, listening skills and applying information, reading for information, research and using reference materials.
- Social Studies and History - creating historical characters or murals, study of felting cultures of Asia, the Far East and Scandinavia, map making, the history of pre industrial felt and felting.
- Art - performance, production and exhibition of visual arts, critical and aesthetic response, cultural and historical context. I have done residencies with classes from preschool to high schools and from gifted to challenged students. Felt making reaches students of all types, even some who struggle in other areas. Anyone who applies energy and enthusiasm can expect success. This is an engaging medium appropriate for beginners and yet stimulating for highly creative minds.
How to arrange a wool and felt residency to your school:
A formal residency lasts ten days. They need not be consecutive days, but should be used in a way that works best for both the host site and the artist. Four hours can be considered a full day, but I may find it best to spend longer at a school, especially if I travel to get there, or I am working on my own art in studio space the host provides. There is also a planning day held long before the residency starts to work out details of the proposal, such as materials costs, travel and accommodations (required for a distance of over 50 miles one way), the core groups and site requirements. The host school provides workspace, materials purchased from my fiber farm, and a core group of no more than three groups of thirty students at once. I will plan the project with the school’s coordinator, bring tools, materials and equipment, demo my art form and create a display/demonstration for the school to have an art experience for the whole population. Sometimes a residency cumulates with the display of students’ felt work. Mural projects have provided schools with a stunning piece of student art to display permanently in their entry. (See photo gallery of students’ work). I can provide training for staff as well as students and or volunteers to help with a residency. The school should plan to publicize the residency and may even plan a community encounter with the artist.
I need a location for the duration of the entire residency, but it can be shared space. Basic needs are ample room to make the project, secure storage for equipment and materials, hot water or at least water and electricity, a drain, empty tables or display space, and sufficient help to load, unload and oversee the project (for younger groups only). A teacher must be present at all times and actively engaged in the work. The floor for wet felting should not be carpeted.
The cost for a residency is $2435, plus materials that range from $200-500 depending on the project and number of students. This cost includes my fee for 10 days and a planning day, the part of the residency that is eligible for state matching funds. Pennsylvania provides matching funds through the Bradford County Regional Arts Council (BCRAC) for 50% of all but materials cost. Brenda Thomas, director of BCRAC, will help with forms and requirements or answer any questions for residencies that take place in their area, including Bradford, Tioga, Lycoming, Wyoming, and Susquehanna. Contact her at brenda@bcrac.org for more information. See the link for an overview and forms for a formal residency. Arrange for a residency by applying between October and late January for the next school year.
Contact me at sueripley@familyrock.net to arrange for a class of shorter duration, but without the matching funds. Charges are $250 for a half or $350 for a whole day of demonstration/display. A whole class project taking about a week in small groups would be $1500, with materials extra, from $15-20 per person. Class size is limited for some projects, not for other interactive displays.
Wool is an amazing medium with many different applications. I have done PA wildlife murals, finger puppet plays, colonial toys, needle felted fantasy sculpture and many other projects with students. I teach many other projects such as hand puppets, nuno felt for scarves or yardage, wool Mache masks, bendable felt forms, needle felted animal sculptures, felted vessels, and bags with a design. I make, and want to teach, marionettes and a story telling yurt (actually called a ghir).I find no end to the possibilities; what shall we make next?