Claire Merry - Craftworker
Welcome to my website. I hope that you enjoy browsing through the various photographs
of my work and I encourage you to follow the links to other sites that I have found useful.
Presently, I work primarily with felt and to a lesser extent with clay and jewellery.
I had very little knowledge of felt making until I happened across the Feltmakers Ireland stall at the Dublin Bloom garden show in 2008. The apparent ease with which the felt makers could create unique textiles, was astounding.
Needless to say, I signed up immediately for membership and the introductory courses.
Check out the Feltmakers Ireland website for further information on meetings and courses
There are several techniques to feltmaking and each can be used to
produce a different type of piece.
From the Felt link, you can see shawls made from wet felting or nuno felting, as well as needle felted three dimensional pieces
Mixing media is great fun.
This picture is mainly wet felted, with machine embroidery for detail and glittery highlights in the trees.
Ceramics making is very similar to felt in that you start with a raw material.
There is little that is more raw than a lump of clay.
Jewellery making is very therapeutic, as the finshed piece can be realised much quicker
than with ceramics or felt.
Most of my jewellery work is with beads and wire to produce necklaces, earrings and brooches.
Another change of tack, these figures have been living in my garden for several years, where they add
spots of interest. My local garden centre owner complimented them and suggested
that I consider making some for sale.
That planted the seed, so with the RDS National Craft Competition entries complete and submitted, I have had time to make some of these figurines.