Recycled Craft from The Fantastical Factory of Curious Craft

During the exciting six weeks that we filmed the The Fantastical Factory of Curious Craft we were lucky to have so many brilliant contestants, but unfortunately as is the nature of the competition some of those fantastic creations ended up being shredded in Gary The Gobbler - an industrial shredding machine! But fear not, all the contestants knew this was a possible outcome of their time on the show. 

It was important to us that these creations didn’t just end up in the bin so I was invited to recycle the shredded craft into something new - not an easy feat considering just how small the bits were that Gary had chopped them into. It was daunting, but I was excited to take on the challenge. The production company sent me over six boxes of shredded creations.

I pondered on them for a good few days before I came up with my idea, one that would look great but also be sensitive to the material I had to work with.  At this time, I was designing our S/S20 collection Bloom Boom, so my head was filled with single blooms and it seemed only fitting to turn the bits into flowers.

Each box was like revisiting the day when we filmed and I loved mixing up materials from two different episodes, knowing they had never met but had so much in common.

Each flower had several stages and it took weeks and weeks of evenings as things had to dry and many of the petals required glueing, priming, painting, and spraying before actually being assembled.

This Dog Rose inspired flower was made from the wire mesh Super Tree. I shaped and covered it in papier-mâché and cotton threads, then mounted it all together on a Mulliput base with a pom pom centre made from the wool of the bust of Keith that also met its end in the shredder!

More centres were made from the shredded plywood, and more petals in different shapes, working with the properties of the materials and feeling my way through - I had no set plan at the start... I let it unfold as I made things!

Keith’s felt hat from the model of him became a pincushion, used for the centre of an echinacea inspired flower. In the midst of all the craft madness, my cat Tiger had some kittens so as you can imagine there were always some kittens ready to ‘help’ me make them.

The crazy parrot headdress became a Carnation style pom pom, the Wolpertinger became a kind of bizarre Sunflower and the other crafts made their own way into each flower.  It was such a lovely way to spend some time thinking about the brilliant time we had filming the show, the new friends and the laughter - and of course the craft!

Missed the show? You can catch The Fantastical Factory of Curious Craft on Channel 4 catch up TV here.