Felting Progress

Mallory Zondag has been hard at work on the living wall installation since she left us this fall. The students are going to be very excited to see the progress. Every piece was hand made by our K-5 students.

Approx 48 x 52"

Artist in residence

Today was the last session with our visiting artist, Mallory Zondag. Every student in 3rd-5th grade choose a flat piece of felt to contribute to the piece and every student K-2 choose either a sphere or a cord to include. All other pieces were theirs to keep. She will combine all of their pieces onto the giant 5' x 5' felted background that all students worked on in class and it will hang prominently in our school.

Felted Spheres

During our 30-minute classes today the K, 1 & 2 students made spheres with felt. This may become rocks or pebbles in the final design. This was the second session with our artist-in-residence, Mallory Zondag.

Artist In Residence

Our visiting artist, Mallory Zondag, started today and it's been amazing to watch the students blossom under her guidance. We are constructing a living wall of fiber using wet felting techniques. Every student K-5 has the opportunity to add to the collective 6 foot square background. Grades 5, 4 & 3 are creating sheets of felt that will be needle felted on top of the background while 2nd, 1st and kindergarten are creating cords that will be used as textural embellishments.

For the flat pieces the students tear and place five thin layers of wool roving, alternating the layers as they stack them on their mat. The mat is a piece of pool covering but you could use a sushi mat or bubble wrap.

A mesh screen is placed over the five layers and then the warm soapy water is used to scrub over the entire pile. We used an olive oil based soap.

Next, they remove the screen and roll over top of the felt with a pool noodle wrapped in the other end of their mat. They agitate for about two minutes. Then we added five more layers to the pile and repeat. They could change color if desired.

For the corded pieces, students received about a yard of roving to wrap around their palm several times. They dunked their hand in the soapy water and rubbed their hands together to agitate. They needed to rotate the wool around the hand so that it was evenly felted. After a few rotations they had  to unwrap the cord and squeegee off the excess soap.

We store the kits by rolling the mats around the pool noodles, stuffing the screen in the open hole of the noodle and securing with a rubber band.

Here is their progress so far: