Important note:
If you would like to join, please register by January 31st.
We will only be able to organize the symposium if we reach the required number of participants by the end of the month. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation!
We are a group of seven friends, all felt artists:
Anikó BOROS, Flóra CARLILE-KOVÁCS, Márti CSILLE, Kinga HUSZTI, Gabriella KOVÁCS, Judit PÓCS and Vanda RÓBERT.
In 2024, after a 12-year hiatus, we reunited to revive the Gift of the Lambs Felt Art Symposium in Hungary – and it was a resounding success! We were thrilled to see that, even in the age of online felt-making courses, the desire for in-person experiences and genuine connections remains strong.
We discovered the perfect setting in the picturesque lakeside village of Orfű-Tekeres in southern Hungary, where we will host the 4th Gift of the Lambs International Felt Symposium in 2025. This time, five of us will lead workshops across two sessions, sharing with everyone the magical synergy of felt-making and creative collaboration.
Courses:
Programs:
The symposium will host an exhibition showcasing the works of members of our artistic community, and the evenings will be spent engaging in informal and interactive professional discussions, sharing experiences.
We also encourage participants to briefly present their professional journeys so far.
On the rest day between the two courses, we will organize a guided tour to the nearby city of Pécs. Pécs is a vibrant university town with a rich history and culture spanning two thousand years. During our tour, we will visit the Roman Early Christian burial chambers recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, explore the renowned Zsolnay Porcelain Museum and Cultural Center, and in the evening, attend a shadow-play performance by an alternative puppet theater troupe (MárkusZínház).
Prices:
The total fee for the two selected courses is €850.
To secure your spot, a €50 registration fee is required. This amount will be deducted from the tuition fee if you participate in the event. The courses are filled in the order of registration.
Tuition payments can be made between March 1 and March 30,
2025, after the registration period concludes.
The total fee for the two selected courses is €850.
To secure your spot, a €50 registration fee is required. This amount will be deducted from the tuition fee if you participate in the event. The courses are filled in the order of registration.
Tuition payments can be made between March 1 and March 30,
2025, after the registration period concludes.
The cost of materials is not included in the course fee. After your registration is processed, we will send you a list of the required materials and tools for your selected courses. You may bring your own wool or purchase it directly from the instructors during the course. Most of the essential tools will be provided.
Money-back guarantee:
These measures are necessary due to the significant upfront costs of organizing the symposium, which depend on the number of registered participants. If a canceled spot is filled from our waiting list, we will handle it fairly at our discretion.
Only a few places left!
Make your registration today!
Accommodation with Full Board
Accommodation is available for individual booking in single or double rooms, or apartments at Natúra Panzió – a beautiful historic mansion within walking distance of the course venue. Prices for the full week (7 nights) start from €580.
Individual bookings open on November 20. While the Natúra Panzió website is only available in Hungarian, booking assistance and information are provided in English and German via email or phone.
Improtant: Please do your booking only via email, and mention that you are reserving accomodation for the Gift of the Lambs Symposium.
Website: www.naturaorfu.hu
e-mail: info@naturaorfu.hu
phone: +36 30 349 6079
phone: +36 72 498 032
About Gabriella
I graduated from the University of Fine Arts as a set and costume designer, I went on to learn French tapestry weaving and mastered carpet design.
I encountered felting some twenty-five years ago and realised that my previous experiences with art were integral to my approach to felting. My design rationale incorporates shapes and colors, reflecting my love for geometry, architecture, and literature. All these elements found their place, whispering in the background, and provided a wonderful foundation that opened a new door to my felt art.
About the workshop
In this three-day workshop, participants will create a hollow felt object measuring approximately 40 × 40 cm (16″ × 16″). This felted creation will serve as a functional and beautiful teapot warmer.
The pomegranate is rich in symbolism across many cultures, representing resurrection, eternal life, sanctity, fertility, abundance, and a blessed future. Its stylized form has been used in various textile designs, and my early tea warmers were inspired by Renaissance pomegranate embroideries. These motifs allow for a lot of creative play.
Felt, with its exceptional thermal insulation properties, is perfect for keeping your tea warm. A felted tea cozy can maintain the temperature of a hot teapot (or even a jug of summer lemonade!) for at least two hours. This cozy is designed for teapots with a diameter of approximately 20 cm (plus handle and spout), though the template can be easily adapted to suit your own teapot’s dimensions. When not in use, the tea cozy doubles as a lovely kitchen or table ornament.
In this workshop, we will focus not only on the technical aspects of felting but also on surface decoration and color blending. I’ll guide you through creating beautiful gradients and teach you how to work with various yarns and silk on thick-walled felt, ensuring that your pattern elements stay in place during the felting process. We will also incorporate additional resists to create exciting shapes and designs, I’ll show several options for decorating the areas between the individual hollow layers. Both sides of the cozy will feature the same pattern.
This workshop is best suited for intermediate to advanced felters looking to deepen their skills and explore new techniques.
About Judit
I have been involved in felting since 1992. From jewelry design to clothing, spatial sculptures, spatial to wall textiles, I deal with several areas of felt production. From the beginning, my work was characterized by experimentation, the focus of which is the spatial development of the felt. I regularly teach at both foreign and Hungarian symposia and forums.
I like the freedom of felt in the shapes and colors as well. Colours can be used, mixed and washed into each other, just like by watercoloring. The different colored layers are interweaving each other and they create new colours around themselfs. I like to originate order from chaos, to arrange the tangle fibres into a whole under my hands. I like to incorporate different materials and rubbing them together, give a feeling as they since ever would have belonged together.
About the workshop
In this 3-day course, we will make small sculptures using various exciting techniques. What they will have in common is that they will be hollow objects, which we fill with plastic granules before felting and we felt them together with it.
We will talk about how it is worth designing a sculpture, in a flattened state by using an internal template.
We will use cracking technique and separating foil to create some of the forms.
We also make double and triple shapes.
We primarily focus on the forms, but we make the surface of the sculptures exciting by using various fibers with plant origin, such as flax, tencel and viscose.
The sculptures, as you can see in the photos, fit in the palm of your hand.
There are simpler and more complicated, more time-consuming types.
During the 3 days, depending on your experience, you will be able to make 5-7 sculptures.
We will progress from simpler forms to more complex ones, so I wholeheartedly recommend this course to both beginners and advanced felters.
It will be a lot of fun.😊
About Anikó
I am inspired by forms of nature. The inspiration for my shawls are in tree branches and veins of leaves. Textures of tree barks and lichens are reflected in the wavy silk inlets of my rings and neckpieces. Stones that I find by waters I set into wool – my pins thus become stone-cradles, my bags have stone eyes and stones are the jewels of my rings, too. They are all unique handmade pieces made of wool and silk.
About the workshop
When silk and wool come together during felting, special surfaces are created.
This magical play of the two materials can now be observed during the creation of jewelry.
On the first day, we will make a ring using the silk waving technique, and on the second day we will make the matching necklace also. We arrange the silk in a simple, geometrical shape so that the waves come out more effective, and we create a necklace with a matching modern solution. Like jewelers, we will make small objects with precisely crafted details.
Our raw materials will be extra fine, hand-dyed wool and translucent silk.
About Márti
Each material bears energy, and in each encounter there is the promise of energy flow.
Since 1985 I have been felting. I have always been interested in old things’ spirit, stories, secrets behind. Also, various combinations of materials fascinate me, which explains why I am looking for felt companions in wood, metal, pearls and glass.
There are some forms, symbols that have been coming back for years, which I can use and refer to as interior or exterior. For instance, the barge and its peel, the skin as bearer and birth deliverer. Or the dream and dreaming as bringing and taking dreams. Also the keepers with holes, the heart holding form showing partly on my spiritual and also on my functional objects.Creation has three phases for me:
1. body-creating, that is making the physical peel for the object, which is felting itself,
2. spirit-stitching, word-by-word making curves via embroidery and giving spirit as expression of feeling and touching,
3. name-giving. I enjoy playing with mother-tongue words, phonemes and phonetics.
The inner secrets, memories can only be for searching and redeeming as award. Experience is not granted just like that. Keep looking, imagining, dreaming and believing!
…and as I believe, I am living life rooted in the earth even now at the beginning of the 21st century with paths meant for me to try and test as a technique in revival.
About the workshop
For experienced felters.
In this workshop, we will prepare a decorative pencil case with special telescopic endings on both ends and with an overlapping closing that ends in felt cords to tie the case with. The technique we will use is wet felting, with the help of an internal template. Pulling out telescopic ends makes the case longer when needed, enabling longer items to fit.
You can choose one of two sizes: a bigger one of about 48 cm and a smaller one of about 35 cm long in their fully pulled-out position. You can keep brushes, scissors, pencils, and all your artists’ utensils in it.
Ornamenting is an adventure in itself: we can build in wool yarn, metallic polyester yarn, small glass beads, and coins. From the felting point of view, it is exciting to be able to finish the telescopic ends and the ends of the cord with different shapes: flower, tentacle, leaf, spiral. I’ll also show you various embroidery techniques you can use to add a final touch to your workpiece.
The material we use includes approximately 100 g of 19-20 micron Australian wool batts, wool tops, and pre-felt.
Join my course and be part of the adventure!
About Vanda
Felting is as natural as breathing, moving, and dancing. After more than twenty years of engagement with the phenomenon and the process, I am still inspired by its basic, yet complex, simplicity. No matter which felting method I am currently working with, my intention is always to reflect this living quality of the felt material itself.
From a young age, I’ve been inspired by visual arts, starting with the art books in family library and later attending drawing lessons. I studied aesthetics, including philosophy, at university. After graduating, I followed the instinct that led me to pursue creativity, delving into various dance styles and art forms. Through feltmaking, I have found an authentic medium that brings together movement, nature, art, and philosophy. Over my career, I have worked and experimented with many different techniques. In my upcoming workshop, I’d like to introduce you to a process that I have rarely taught but have frequently used in creating fine art textiles and garments.
About Nuno Collage
I admire fine textiles and have collected a wide variety of precious fabrics over the years. I wanted to showcase and make use of these hidden treasures. I started creating collages, benefiting from the unifying strength of wool fibers to bond and preserve the compositions. This process, much like painting, allows various colors, patterns, and textures to blend, creating an entirely new whole with smooth shading and a cohesive, relief-like surface.
About the workshop
With an emphasis on detailed fabric patterning, you can create a shawl or wrap, providing an excellent introduction to making felt garments. To save space, we use the hollow felt technique, an essential skill for creating wearables. You can determine the size and style of the shawl yourself, by designing a cowl, a stole, or a wrap, depending on your intention and skill level. If you’re more passionate about making a detailed, artistic textile collage, creating a wall art piece can be a great alternative for you as well. To add a personal touch to your approach, feel free to bring your own treasured fabrics to include in your composition.
I recommend this workshop to both beginner and advanced felters, as a way to enhance their artistic expression.
Skills to learn: Advanced nuno felt technique called Nuno Collage. Make use of your fabric scraps to work of art and wearables. Hollow felt technique for creating lightweight garments. An alternative technique for creating wall art pieces.
Registration process:
Complete and submit your application form.
Wait for a confirmation email, which will include a payment link for the €50 registration fee.
Once payment is received, your registration will be processed, and your spot in the selected courses will be confirmed.