The Art of Craft with Cockpit Studios, Bloomsbury – Sep to Oct 2025
Posted: 10th November 2025Over the course of this eight-week programme participants explored four different artistic practices spending two weeks on each; embossing, painting, natural dye and needle felting.
Participants were introduced to the delicate craft of embossing over the first two weeks. They learnt how to use specialist equipment, such as the press machine, and used a mixture of flowers, card, wire and sheet metal to create their own compositions.
The second art practice was painting. Beautiful fresh flowers inspired participants as they learnt to paint on canvas. They then had the opportunity to translate these floral designs onto glass through experimenting with glass painting.
The participants then explored natural dye, experimenting with a range of flowers which were then bundled into fabric and steamed to produce beautiful rich naturally dyed fabrics – participants left with their own naturally dyed silk scarves. The following week the leftover dyed fabric was used to create nature inspired landscapes, using applique as the method to attach fabrics.
The final two weeks focused on the relaxing craft of needle felting, where some people chose to follow templates and others created their own designs. Everyone seemed to enjoyed the slow pace, there was discussion about how relaxing it was to have the repetitive motion of placing the needle in and out of the felt fibres.
It was an engaging and engrossing programme – thank you to the wonderful artists at Cockpit Studios for sharing their artforms with us.
