Basketry Class at The Folk School

I recently returned to the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, my third visit so far. This time around, I tried out yet another new medium: basketry. Not just any basketry, baskets woven with antlers! As an aspiring naturalist with an ever-growing collection of bones, this seemed like the perfect course for me.

Although I work in many types of fiber mediums, I have no previous experience with basketry, but thanks to my talented instructor Mark Hendry and his assistant Scarlette Rouse, I had a wonderful week learning this new craft. During my week at the Folk School, I created 4 pieces (2 baskets, one tray, plus one sculptural “thingy”), and tried out all sorts of weaving materials such as reed, seagrass, grapevine, and yarn.

There’s something truly magical about the Folk School and if you’ve never been, I highly encourage you to check it out at least once. Don’t wait until you retire, go now! Getting out of my usual routine and 100% absorbed in something new does really good things for my mental health. These “art-cations” are a great way to spend a week in a non-competitive learning environment, getting an intense and in depth crash course in your chosen medium (most of which are rooted in Appalachian culture) and I always lose track of time. It feels like I was there a year, and I mean that in the best possible way.

I’m not sure yet how I will incorporate my newly-learned basketry skills into my current work but I’m excited to find out!

Past posts about the John C. Campbell Folk School:
2019: Rug Hooking

2016: Metal Working

Tufted landscapes (and the struggle behind them)

It's been well over 6 months since I picked up my tufting guns, but I'm so glad I did this summer. While this particular fiber art medium is still very new to me, I'm starting to get the hang of it and slowly developing my own style. 3 sets of tufted diptychs are ready to ship & hang in your home, and here's a time-lapse video showing a peek at the process. 

While learning to work in any new medium or figure out the nuances of using a new tool can take time (and lot of trial and error), it’s what keeps me going. I need to learn new things, always. Tufting seemed like the next logical step for me once I started expanding on my needle felting work and doing mixed media fiber art a few years back, but tufting has been a rocky road so far. I love that I can work larger and faster, but I am having a hard time accepting that the detail level that I’m able to achieve with punch needle, needle felting, and rug hooking, is just not going to be possible with a tufting gun (or at least not at my current skill level). I had to rethink my ideas and adjust accordingly.

Some of my other struggles when it comes to tufting are purely comfort-related. It’s a very physical art form - you are on your feet for hours and hours, the tufting guns are heavy and they take a toll on hands and wrists in a way hand-work doesn’t seem to effect me. Plus, it’s loud and messy, and I like to keep my studio neat, even though the whole point of a studio is to have a workspace where it’s totally acceptable to have a mess. It seems silly that these drawbacks are part of what’s kept me from tufting for half a year, but I’m just being honest.

I was considering selling my tufting guns and frame, I hadn’t used them in months, they were new and in good condition (and too expensive to just sit here and not be used). I wasn’t looking forward to setting up the frame and having whatever project take over my studio for days on end. Although I may eventually eliminate tufting from my studio I needed to give it another chance, a REAL chance, a chance to be it’s own thing and lead the way to a new style, a chance to change my expectations. It can’t do what I want it to do but it can do a lot of other very cool things. I need to embrace those things.

All 3 of these diptychs have a completely different style, though the subject matter is very similar. One is focused on two-tone gradients, one it’s very abstract and blocky, and the last has a bit of a stained glass or paint-by-number feel. I like all of them for different reasons, and it’s enough to push me to keep trying and keep tufting. I hope to add more tufted pieces to the website later this summer, but for now shop the small collection online.

Tufting My Heart Out

Back in July, when things were slowing down for the summer, I finally invested in something I’ve been wanting to try for years: tufting. My current body of fiber art keeps getting bigger in size & more and more textured. Plus, my background in commercial interior design has given me a major soft spot for textiles and carpet, so all of that seemed like the perfect combination of reasons to try out this new technique. However, by the time my tufting guns, frame, and materials arrived in early August, I was neck deep in commissions and fall season craft show prep. The box sat unopened in my studio until the week of Christmas, when I finally came up for air.

If you’re not familiar with tufting, it’s kind of like a sewing machine gun for making rugs (or art, or home decor, or whatever you can imagine). Yarn is threaded through the gun, and it pushes the yarn through the foundation fabric. A loop gun gets you tight loops, like you might see in commercial carpet. A “cut” gun gets you cut pile, which is what you probably have in your home (plush yarn fibers sticking straight up from the floor).

Learning something new is very exciting for me, and it’s so tricky to make time for these things, but it’s always worth it. I just recently got to try out my new glorious tools and it was worth the 6 month delay! I took an online training course last week and got started experimenting with the different guns and yarn options right away. Definitely a major learning curve coming from doing every little stitch by hand to a piece of machinery like this, but after a few practice pieces I finally got the hang of things. The gun is almost too fast, compared to what I’m used to, but one of the big reasons I wanted to try it was to be able to speed things up a little with my work. I’m not rushing things, I just dream BIG!

I have really enjoyed playing around with different yarn so far. Of course I started out only using the yarn that the instructor advised, but then once you learn the rules, you’re free to break them, right? Some yarn, like thick rug yarn i use for punch needle projects, works fine but only as a single ply. Thinner yarn, like the nylon I received as a donation from Milliken Floors earlier this year, works well as a 2 or 3 ply.

I LOVE all the possible textures you can achieve with different yarn types, plus changing between the loop and the cut pile guns. I haven’t worked up the nerve to adjust the loop and pile heights yet, but believe me, it’s on my list of things to try once I get comfy with the basics. Until then, I’m here tufting my heart out and enjoying learning something new. Where has this been all my life!?

Virtual Workshops

This has been months in the making, and I’m excited to finally share my first virtual workshops with you! I don’t know if or when I’ll be teaching again in-person this year due to the COVID-19 epidemic, so it was finally time to take my workshops to the virtual realm. Check out the new DIY section on my website!

I have always had students who live in other states and countries who were never able to participate in my classes, and I’ve also had local students who just can’t make the in-person workshops work with their schedules, so I hope this new option will be a good thing for everyone.

The first two virtual workshops I’m offering are my 2 most popular classes - Needle Felted Succulents and 2D Hoop Art. Both of these classes are beginner level so no prior experience is required, but you’ll work up to a more advanced project by the time you go through the lessons. I’ll also show you everything you need to know about tools, materials, and techniques, plus I’ll share some tips and trips I learned the hard way when I first started needle felting in 2009.

Enroll in cactus workshop

Purchase cactus kit

Enroll in hoop art workshop

Purchase hoop art kit

If you prefer to purchase your own supplies, or you already have some, that’s totally fine! I’ll let you know what you need for each class. However, if you need to purchase materials, I have kits available on my website that have exactly what you’ll need to follow along with the workshop. Enroll in the workshops and shop supplies in the new DIY section on my website.

What other classes would you like to see me offering in the future? Leave your ideas in the comments below or send a message through the contact form. I would love to hear from you!

Rug Hooking at the Folk School

Last week I had the pleasure of returning to the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC for an intro to rug hooking course. This fascinating fiber art form is something I’ve wanted to learn for years, but I was having a hard time finding anyone locally who could teach me (or who had ever heard of rug hooking, for that matter). The history of traditional rug hooking is interesting, and the craft itself is quite remarkable, but I had a very specific reason for wanting to learn this new medium. I knew somehow, some way, I wanted to incorporate this dimensional texture into my existing needle felting work. Even though I could easily envision how I’d combine the two mediums, I had absolutely no idea where to start, so when I saw there was a rug hooking course coming up at the Folk School, I knew the stars had finally aligned and it was time to find out if this idea was possible.

 The Folk School is located in the misty Appalachian mountains, about as far west as you can go and still be in the state of North Carolina. It’s remote, it’s beautiful, and it has a special community that’s been teaching a variety of traditional handicrafts for nearly 100 years. You can learn blacksmithing, chair caning, felt making, book binding, metal smithing, pottery, glass bead making, photography, wood turning, and weaving, just to name a few. The class sizes are small, typically less than 10 students, and you learn by total immersion. By the end of my week, I had put in 40 hours in the fiber art studio! 

The first hour of class, we learned about the tools, materials, and techniques required for rug hooking, and then we were off to hook our first practice piece – a small coaster, using a simple log cabin pattern. Learning to hook a rug seems simple, but it’s not simple at all. After cutting thin strips of wool, you use a hooked hand tool and pull them through the open weave of a piece of fabric. It sounds so basic, but there’s a lot to it. You have to pull the loops through the fabric just so, and space them out enough, but not too much. You can work with a predetermined pattern, but after my first practice piece, I chose to make up my own or work free form. 

By day two, I was hooking away on my first large piece and finally had the chance to try out my idea of combining rug hooking and needle felting, and I’m thrilled to say – IT WORKED! I hooked a landscape, creating a foreground and mountains with little loops of wool, then I needle felted the sky with roving. I absolutely love how the two wool textures look together. I’m comfortable with landscapes, I make them almost daily (in felt), so this seemed liked a good place to start. 

The third day, I tried a more abstract piece, a longer tapestry wall hanging in a pale color palette, still experimenting with mixing roving with the wool “noodles” I was hooking through the linen background fabric. I also learned various ways to finish the pieces, like binding the edges with yarn.  My loops aren’t perfect, my edges aren’t straight, I ran out of wool so the finished piece is about an inch shorter than I had been planning, by I learned so much by the time this one was finished and I’m in love with the irregular pattern and soft earthy colors. 

 Towards the end of the week, I challenged myself to try hooking precise geometric shapes with curves and points, change colors more often, work with smaller scale fabric strips, and switch directions with my loops. I created two more pieces, both using scrap wool and remnants. I also went bold with my color choices and have no regrets about that! 

After my first 40 hours of rug hooking, all in one week, I’m only just starting to understand how it works. I’m a beginner and will be for quite some time, my work is far from perfect, but I’m so happy to be off on this new adventure in a different medium that compliments what I’m already doing. My fiber art is bound to change in the future, and that’s exciting in so many ways.

Check out this short 5 minute video showing highlights of the week, time-lapse footage of my first few hooking projects, and work from the other students in various classes.

I would like to extend a special thanks to Metropolitan Arts Council (MAC) who made this educational undertaking possible by awarding me a grant to help fund my week at the Folk School plus the investment of the new tools and equipment required to continue to pursue a new dimension in my fiber art. Thank you thank you thank you!

This program is funded in part by the Metropolitan Arts Council which receives support from the City of Greenville, BMW Manufacturing Company, Michelin North America, Inc., SEW Eurodrive and the South Carolina Arts Commission.