Follow the Furzedown Fleece

Residency period: 2nd  – 21st August 2022

Geraldine Kelly is this year's Artist in Residence in Sprout and she's looking forward to hosting a very different type of residency this August - she and her friends will be taking a raw fleece and turning it into wool on a spinning wheel, with fun activities, workshops and exhibitions featuring textiles, tapestries and weaving skills. 

​

This artist’s residency is all about wool - processing a whole sheep’s fleece. The journey of transforming a raw fleece through to usable yarn involves many different steps, many decisions and lots of skills, much specialised equipment, and a whole other vocabulary. 

The natural fleeces are locally sourced from city farms or from sheep farmers and breeders beyond London. Historically British wool was renowned for high quality. It is used for knitting and crochet work, weaving and carpets, clothing and upholstery.  

You can have a go yourself at all stages of these traditional activities. Friends from the Vauxhall City Farm Spinners and the London Guild of Spinners and Weavers will run drop-in sessions to try your hands at carding and drop spinning, workshops to learn and practice spinning with a wheel, tapestry weaving techniques, demonstrations of spinning, plying, carding and blending.  Or just enjoy watching the traditional craft work by experienced and expert practitioners in spinning and weaving.

Details of workshops HERE 

If you are interested in doing a residency next year, please get in touch with Sprout - we are very keen to support different artists and creative groups by offering our space!

​

• Sign up for workshops on spinning and weaving, there will be different workshops for both adults and children to learn new skills such as spinning and weaving. These must be booked and paid for in advance. For details visit Workshops tab HERE
   

• Enter the Drop Spinning Challenge - the longest length of drop-spinning achieved in 10 mins every Saturday, with a special leaderboard and prize
   

• Drop-in sessions to watch wool being processed, with demonstrations of weaving
   

• Tapestry show on the theme of the over-use of plastic and recycling 
   

• Selection of natural wool skeins, dyed yarns, and natural woollen products for sale
   

• Drop in and chat with us about wool and other natural fibres