Felters' Fling 2011 Conference
An intensive, week long, felting experience for fiber artists
August 20 to August 28, 2011
at Snow Farm, Williamsburg, MA

Liz Clay
Liz Clay makes stunningly beautiful boas, wraps and scarves. Her collection of exclusive hand felted accessories combines innovative design with superb craftsmanship. Beautiful and feminine creations exclusively handmade using the finest of luxury fibres; boas, wraps and scarves carefully created from cashmere, merino, alpaca and silks. Her collection is available online and exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad; featured in the collections of Stella McCartney, Givenchy, and selected outlets in London including Harrods.

Liz received her BA in Creative Arts, as well as a Post Graduate Fellowship in Textiles form Bath Spa University College.
Her work has been exhibited around the world including Japan, Turkey, Spain, Germany, Hungary and the USA.
She has been featured in a wide range of textile publications and is author of the book "Nuno Felt."

Karoliina Arvilommi and Roderick Welch
Karoliina Arvilommi has been working with textiles and color for about 20 years. She is a member of the Finnish Association of Designers (ORNAMO) and a founding member of OKRA Oy, an Arts and Crafts company situated in the center of Helsinki. She started her professional life as a "taidekutoja" (art weaver) and her work covered a wide range of weaving techniques from upholstery fabrics to carpets. For the past 17 years Karoliina has been a full-time, independent felt maker and artist. "I started out as an independent weaver in 1985 and after 5 or 6 years I discovered felt." Felting allowed the freedom of form and color that I was looking for.

Each of her works is treated as a unique and individual piece, the emphasis being on handwork, taking time and care to ensure it meets her own high standards. "Quality is an important aspect I have always strived for and like all things in feltmaking is achieved by touch and instinct, not by formula and computation." In collaboration with her partner Roderick, Karoliina's latest designs combine wood and felt in occasional furniture and table accessories. Karoliina is also producing brooches, pendants and earrings using a combination of recycled fabrics and felt.

Pat Bennett
Pat graduated from Mass College of Art with a BFA and received her MFA in sculpture from Alfred University. Her recent work has focused on female clothing as sculptural form, as well as personal and social statement. She works in metal, paper, glass and other medium. Pat has taught welding and lampworking for both the High School and Adult Programs at Snow Farm. She partnered with feltmakers at Fling 2005, 2007 and 2009 to rave reviews. Pat is a resident artist at Snow Farm as well as a program coordinator.

Annemie Koenen
Annemie first learned to love textiles through her mother, who was a strict textile craft teacher. In 1999 she founded her studio: 'Wolwerkplaats Moeder Aarde'. In 2006 and 2007 she was organizational leader and tutor at the Dutch International Felt Academy. Since 2005 she has traveled in Central Asia - Kyrgyzstan and organized groups textile tours. Her workshop: "Across the borders from Central Asia" is  based on felting and traditional stitch/embroidery techniques she has learned in her travels in Central Asia. Annemie has taught this and other workshops in America, UK, Kyrgyzstan, Germany and the Netherlands.
She is published in the felting magazines: 'Feltmatters', 'Verfilzt und Zugenäht' and 'Viltkontakt'. and has a felting video on YouTube:"How to Make a Happy Carpet."

Chad Alice Hagen
Chad Alice Hagen has been exploring hand-felted wool since 1980. She received her BA in Art and Master's in Textile Design from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work has been featured in Fiberarts Magazine, Surface Design Journal and Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot. American Craft Magazine, Echoes, and Fiberarts Design Books. Hagen's felt work has been exhibited throughout the United States as well as in Mexico City, Japan, India, England and Denmark. She is the author of The Weekend Crafter: Feltmaking, Fabulous Felt Hats, and Fabulous Felted Scarves (with co-author Jorie Johnson). Chad's feltmaking specialty and passion is resist dyeing of hand-felted wool.

Erman Martin Yost
Trained as a painter, for many years Erma painted large abstract landscapes, but, since childhood, sewing and playing with fabric have been a first love. Eventually the "art quilt" became her medium of expression. In recent years she has adopted the archaic form of handmade felt as her creative canvas. In this medium, saturated colors migrate through the entire structure, resulting in intriguingly sensuous surfaces that are enhanced with stitching, digital imagery, mono-printing, appliqué, and found objects.
Erma earned her degrees from James Madison University (BA, Art Ed.; MA, Painting and Ceramics). She has had 17 solo shows at Noho Gallery in Chelsea (New York City). Her work was included in the 2009 "Art of the State," an annual juried show at the State Museum of Pennsylvania. An art quilt is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Art and Design. Through the New Jersey Art Annual: Crafts Exhibitions, Erma's work has been exhibited in the Jersey City Museum, the Newark Museum, the New Jersey State Museum, the Hunterdon Museum, and the Morris Museum. In 1994 her stitched constructions were part of an international embroidery exhibition at six Takashimaya Galleries in Japan. Included in over twenty books, it appears in "The Art Quilt Book" by Robert Shaw and in "Beautiful Things" published by GUILD.com Most recently her work was included in "Fiberarts Design Book 7."

Bruce Sargent
Ten years ago, at Spirit Hollow, a shamanic school tucked back in the Taconic Mountains of Vermont, Bruce fell in love with yurts. "I was bedazzled by an exotic tent, with a framed door, wooden floor, diamond latticed walls and rays of rafters, arching out from a central sky light. I was dumbstruck by the complex beauty and warmth of a tent in Green Mountain winter. In the yurt my divergent worlds came together."

Eventually, Bruce left his job in Boston at a Fortune 500 company, down-sized his life and began planning his yurt. Within two month of starting, he moved into a new sixteen foot diameter yurt, or "ger" (Mongolian for "home") all at a cost of less than $1000. Since then he has been helping others realize their dream of building a yurt though workshops and publication of his book, "For the Love of Yurts."

Anna Gunnarsdottir
Anna is a native of Akureyri, Iceland. She studied textile art and has her own studio and gallery, "Svartfugl and Hvítspói," in Akureyri. She also took various felt making courses in Denmark, Norway, the UK, and the USA. She works mainly with wool, silk, leather, and fish-skin.

Anna is the member of Textile Association as well as the Artists Association of Iceland. She has taken part in many solo and group exhibitions in Iceland and around the world. She has received many awards and prizes for her work, including being named City-Artist of Akureyri in the year 2008.

Marjolein Dallinga
Marjorlein trained in graphic arts and painting at Minerva Academy, a fine arts institute in Groningen Holland, where she was born. She spent subsequent years doing mostly painting and drawing. She came to Canada in 1989, married and raised a family of three boys.

With the increasing demand for physical space at home, she gradually turned from painting to focus on smaller and less demanding creative things such as toys, during which time she was introduced to felting. She found it to be a medium in which she could express herself as she had done in her painting. Felting is also an activity which readily fits in with her lifestyle while caring for a family.

Initially she created handbags, hats, shawls and mittens which led her to teach the art of felting. Through the contacts she made in her courses she became involved in producing theatrical pieces when her work came to the notice of the Cirque du Soleil. That developed into making things to order, but the most exciting outcome is the experimental nature of her work with the Cirque.

Jean Gauger
Jean attended College as an Art Education Major -- "Between my craving to make art and my love of teaching I
believe I have found my calling in life." While she has always been a knitter, she has come to felt as a medium fairly recently. Once she discovered the medium, she fully immersed herself in the craft, "taking every course and reading every book" she could get her hands on for the past five years. She developed her one-of-a-kind "nuno" pieces, inspired by butterflies, that have become a coveted accessory across the country and led to the establishment of Jean's textile business -- Sugar Plum Originals. "I have used one of the most beloved insects of all, the butterfly, and incorporated it into clothing and wall hangings. Nature has the most wonderful palette from which to draw inspiration." Her work has been recently exhibited at Davey Jones Gallery in Albany, NY. Jean teaches her special techniques through hands-on workshops across the country and through the internet on Skype and YouTube.

 

Registration and Fees

Schedule and The Felt and Fiber Bazaar

Session A Workshop Offerings

Felters' Frenzy Day

Session B Workshop Offerings

Faculty

Pricing and Refund Policy

Please go to our Logistics page for details on directions, transportation, off-site lodging, vendor registration, and more.