Branching Out! Getting all three-dimensional

Starting to really have fun now, branching out!

Pauline, Tina, Khateegah, Theresa and Joanne have now got to grips with needle felting with soft materials such as sheep fleece, making small samples of our own, and then a bigger group wall-hanging with differant British birds on: we keep adding to this a little bit each week (Theresa added 2 very nice bees this time).

We are now beginning to transform an upside-down branch (cut, with some difficulty from my garden!) into a wrapped sculpture, with bulging fungi forms growing out of the branch. Good fun and very sociable thing to all do together, using wool scraps, wadding and tights as the main materials. Tina may finally get to make her eagle to add to this, and Sally really wants a peregrine falcon in there to unsettle all the garden birds. It's interesting to make natural-looking forms such as fungi 'grow' and cluster out of the tree, in something of an echo of the mass of the man-made boxes of Spontaneous city.

Next thing will be another sculpture - the group are really keen to have a go at this now: it'll be a tree-like structure, using cardboard tubes wrapped in recycled denim - lots of fun cutting and gluing . Not much sewing thank goodness, because none of us can see well enough to thread the needles - unless we borrow Sally's glasses! Watch this space for pics of this...