​A friend gifted me a book from her shelf: Artwear Fashion and Anti-Fashion by Melissa Leventon. For anyone interested in textile arts, and various methods of garment making, the book is a treasure trove. Like a delicious box of fine chocolates I knew I needed to ration the lavish colour illustrations. Unlike a box of chocolates, this book will be a treat and a source of inspiration again and again. The dense text illuminates the history and context of ArtWear in North Amerika and worldwide. Each illustration comes with the title, artist name, dates and an insightful explanation of the piece.
On page 97 I discovered a loom-knitted coat created by Linda Mendelson. The coat is beautiful, long and rainbow coloured. Mendelson is known for referencing text and music. I found her poetic inspiration for the coat in the work’s description:
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.

The poem is by William Butler Yeats, 1914. Intrigued and drawn to the rhythm of the poem I looked for information Poetry Foundation’s website and discovered that the coat in the poem is a metaphor for Yeats’ poetic style.  Yeats simplified his style of writing, “walking naked” and thereby disappointed many readers of his time. It was one of many style changes he made over his working life. According to Irish poet Seamus Heany, Yeats came to believe that it was important to constantly discard the old and find the new voice “to say that area properly”. The principle translates well from writing poetry to other arts. Like Yeats, fibre artists will not run out of ways to hone their craft and “face into another area of experience” to do justice to their project, sometimes without considering audience appeal.

Did Linda Mendelson’s need to apply new skills or use a different style to create the coat on page 96?  I will have to look it up.

​Alice Pallett

Delivered with her Aussie accent, Pam De Groot assured me that the stiff silk organza with even stiffer embroidery stripes on it would felt on the inside of a lined nuno vest without the need for fibres to “glue” it down … “She’ll be right” she said. And she was!

​Again, I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from the amazing community of felt-makers from around the world, this time a Felted Vest with Pam de Groot. Every workshop (in person or on-line) is an opportunity to pick up more skills to make the fine felt products I aspire to create. The angle of the template, the curve of the neck, the patterning of the design, and the shaping of the “fit” were all techniques picked up from Pam.

Here is a snap of my vest which I’ve called my “NYC-Transit Vest”... although perhaps I should call it “She’ll be Right”!

Diane Goossens

**a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals**
 
How would you define your felt-making community? What does the community bring to you as an artist and a person?
 
I’ve been reflecting on these questions since I was privileged to be part of the western Hungary tour organized by Flora Carlile-Kovacs http://www.floranemez.eu/ last month. With ten felt-makers from Canada and the US, we took two wonderful workshops with Hungarian felt-makers Vanda Roberts and Judit Pocs interspersed with taking in the thermal baths, sights and tastes of this beautiful country.
 
For me, the trip felt like an extension of the felt making community that has been established locally through our Felt It Forward meetings, the Art Felt Collaborative, and the Ponderosa Fiber Arts Guild. It was also an extension of Felt-Feutre. The classrooms were a fractal of felt-making communities I’ve been part of.  In short order there was laughter, stories, and teasing, mixed with the ohhs and awhs of people expressing their admiration of each other’s works. This extended to the time outside classrooms with small and large, ever-changing, clutches of women, walking and sharing stories of who they are and what matters to their lives. Now with the Hungary tour, my felt-making community is beginning to feel truly global.
 
For me, my felt-making community brings a sense of belonging to fiber art  practised by a lovely group of people from around the world. Yes, felt-making is about the art form but it also, for me, is about being in community with others who share the love of working with natural fibers and creating something unique that says something about them and about their worlds.
 
So, on reflection, I’d describe my community as artistically rich, soul-satisfying and international. It brings joy to me and possibility to my felting.
 
Diane Goossens
*https://www.google.ca/search?q=definition+of+community&oq=definitio&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j35i39j0l4.3765j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

In the fall of 2009 I made the move from the lower mainland here to Kelowna, a new beginning in a new town. The excitement started mounting immediately.

Within two months of my relocation I found myself itching for something to busy my hands. After years of working in clay in Vancouver I was still trying to find my bearings here in Kelowna and meeting plenty of artful oriented new friends. It didn’t take me long to become smitten with “the exotic Okanagan Valley” and one afternoon strolling down Lakeshore Avenue I stumbled across the Art of Yarn where I noticed a poster advertising felting classes.

That poster was the new start I had been looking for. Being unfamiliar with felting, my curiosity compelled me to try it out, I signed up. Thanks to Judith Mueller, a multi-talented artist, teacher, knowledge sharer, and now my good friend I was able to learn the secrets of felting.

Judith was a well of information around all things fiber and she shared her skills and process, I was transfixed and soon found myself digging in and seeing how much I could learn. Very few times have I been so sure and satisfied with a process in art but this one one I could not walk away from.

Now seven years later, my passion to felt and explore this ever evolving art form continues. Most recently I had the pleasure of co-creating the 2017 Okanagan Arts Awards with the Art Felt Collaborative of whom I am a founding member. AFC is a 5 woman group that launched four years ago, members include Violet Racz, Alice Pallett, Diane Goossens, Judith Mueller. We all share a felt-centered passion and enjoy spending time in our supportive and engaged art community.

If you have ever wondered what felting is and how it works, I encourage you to reach out and try a class with one of our groups felt teachers this Spring. For happenings, workshops, events with Felt it Forward's community gatherings, shows, or questions ask or simply follow us on
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/OkanaganFeltArtists/
​or on our website http://www.artfeltcollaborative.com/.

Happy Spring Felting, Amy Burkard

​

Charlotte Sehmisch is a German felt artist I met at the Felt/Feutre Symposium in Penticton last year. While she stayed with me in Kelowna for a few days after the symposium she showed me the little book she had published in 2010. It outlines her career path from first exposure to felting as a child to recent work.  The book is filled with delicious photographs, works of art in their own right. Charlotte told me of her photographer friends who traded their labour and expertise for her work. She told of the 170 eggs she was asked to fry to create the background for the model in the blue dress.  I should have asked her about the gigantic chocolate balls with fruit, background to the model on page thirtynine.
Charlotte is passionate about José de Sousa Saramago, a Portuguese writer who died in 2010. In her book she quotes from his work, statements about the “knowing of hands”. Her book’s title “FILZ: WENN DIE HÄNDE WISSEN WAS SIE TUN” translates into "FELT: WHEN THE HANDS KNOW WHAT THEY DO”. I get the message: trust your hands to know, don’t overthink when you work.
Even with the text in German, this is an interesting and worthwhile book with images of Charlotte’s unique work. I imagine her in her studio, trusting her hands as she sets out to give form to another vision.
 
Alice Pallett