N289-Mechanoreception

Megaphone-full-frontal-close-up_rside478-copy

Foundation

storm-window

Brick Wall Pendant

4th Gen

4th Gen

What-Remains

Between-the-Lines-clothes-pins-SM-2022

Ghost_Balloons-3-across-top_604-copy

Unseen Felt Knot

FELTING WORKSHOPS

SDA ONLINE WORKSHOP
Wrangling Wool Fibers in Wet Felting
April 5th & 12th

NEXT ONLINE & ONPOINT! COURSE
Course 2 Applications of Partial Felt
July 13- September 28, 2025

WHERE TO FIND STRONGFELT

SHOP Contemporary Felt Jewelry, Objects & Sculpture + STUDIO TOOLS!

NEW EARRING COLLECTION
Released Feb 14, 2025!

In Asheville, NC? Planning a visit?
Schedule a STUDIO APPOINTMENT!
Email Lisa Klakulak through the contact link & SHOP Available Works In Person

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An archive of newsletters can be sourced on the INTRIGUE blog of this site offering insights into Klakulak’s artistic practice over nearly two decades of making & teaching around the world.

StrongFelt Recently Uploaded Work

feltstrong

artist + educator based in Asheville, NC
fine fiber art adornment & sculpture
online & F2F wet felting classes
linger longer. look closer.

Instagram post 18036494390187762

Instagram post 18036494390187762

WORKSHOP POSTPONEMENT Due to unforeseen circumstan

WORKSHOP POSTPONEMENT
Due to unforeseen circumstances we have decided to postpone this in-person workshop until the summer of 2026. I'm super excited to be teaching this NEW 3-day Advanced Pendant Course at Vrouw Wolle, the fiber arts studio of Hilde & Francoise in Essen Belgium June 12-14, 2026. I’ll be sticking around closer to home in the southeast US this coming year, so secure your seat in these workshops while I’m teaching in Europe in 2026 at www.vrouwwolle.be.

Join me in building next level ornamental design inspired by metal jewelry mounting techniques of bezel and prong setting and elaborate bails for hanging. Partial felt will be cut to shape the bezel (the reveal hole to see your encased object) and free motion stitched, adding versatility to the shape of the opening and patterned color and texture inspired by the surface qualities of your object. Additionally, in a second pendant, the template for the hollow form encasement will be extended into a multi-dimensional tubular form for the hanging bail device. Embedded partial felt will be directionally fulled using extreme differential shrinkage to sculpt concave and convex curves to create a bail that is worthy of being a hollow form bead or necklace in and of itself!

I’ve been teaching in person wet felting techniques for jewlery since the early oughts with a particular concentration over the past 4 years through my Online & Onpoint! Felt Jewelry Series: Material, Technique & Impact. Just as this series is focused on tiered learning for support in developing more complex formations, this Advanced Pendant Course will offer new approaches for designing Bezels & Bails to create next level felt jewelry for those who’ve taken my in person Resist-based Pendant Course and/or my Online & Onpoint Course 1, Foundational Structure.

@vrouwwolle #strongfelt #wetfelting #woolfiber #felt #feltsmalllearnbig #feltnextlevel #feltjewellery #feltpendants #feltadorned #felttechniques #feltrefined #bezels #bails #objectencasement #feltskin #ornamentthebody #feltwearable #whatisfelt
#contemporaryjewelry #jewelrydesign #materialstudies #mixedmediajewelry

WORKSHOP POSTPONEMENT Due to unforeseen circumsta

WORKSHOP POSTPONEMENT
Due to unforeseen circumstances we have decided to postpone this in-person workshop until the summer of 2026. This will be my 3rd time with Hilde & Francoise in their Vrouw Wolle fiber arts studio in Essen, Belgium so you know we are offering a dynamic experience together ✨

Constructed Vessel:
Edge Welding Textured Panels and Cyclinders
June 6-10, 2026

This is a 5 day, multi-tiered hollow form vessel workshop using slab built ceramic form as inspiration. We will be making larger cylindrical forms by joining up panels made from partial felt using two different types of surface texture: resisted plane and raising hollow form surface protrusions. We will sculpt the shoulder, neck and mouth of the form by making strategic cuts to the cylinder’s rim, embedding additional partial felt shapes and exploiting differential shrinkage and directional fulling. Smaller initial studies will provide the opportunity to develop skills for perimetral fulling to create these concave and convex manipulations of surface and form.

If this ✨ sparks ✨ your interest, take that next step and sign up at www.vrouwwolle.be. Looking forward to an excellent workshop experience in June 2026! @vrouwwolle

#strongfelt #wetfelting #feltworkshop #feltinperson #feltsculpting #feltvessels #raisingform #hollowform #differentialshrinkage #slabconstruction #fibersculpture #contemporaryfelt #masterclass #vrouwwolle

Forwarding from the last post about using primaril

Forwarding from the last post about using primarily naturally dyed color when I began felting….

That self-imposed limitation made me reach for different types of animal fiber. Most importantly, at that time in my making story, was felting with different colors of natural fiber so when dyeing a finished good, I could achieve variations within a color family whether that was including silk, alpaca or natural colors of various sheep breeds in my surface design.

The resulting medley of middle tones prompted me to start using free-motion stitching to add high contrast white and black in my design work, not to mention the bonus of fine detail and texture fields possible! Alex Slinde, another resident artist at the same time I was a resident at the Appalachian Center for Craft in 2003, showed me how the darning foot worked in relation to dropping the feed dogs and I was off running! I love helping to liberate folks from the confines of traditional machine sewing!

These precursors are definitely responsible for the aesthetic that I’ve developed for STRONGFELT works of Lisa Klakulak. Today, even when using commercially dyed wool, I work in color families mimicking the tones I would achieve naturally and add that important contrast of thread to create more depth. Pictured is one of my new pair of earrings in the collection that will be launched next week for Valentine’s Day! In the background, an older necklace of felt and silk + glass encased in the silk pockets + some stitched resistance and then over-dyed with walnut and madder. This piece, “Process of Person.” You can find it in my ONLINE SHOP.
Link 🔝

#strongfelt #aesthetic #style #felt #wool #feltwork #naturaldyes #colorfamily #overdyeing #animalfiber #proteinfibers #freemotionstitching #highcontrast #stitchedtexture #stitchedline #stitchedcompaction #feltwearables #feltjewelry #feltearrings #bigasshoops #lightasafeather

Doing a #throwbackthursday…perhaps because the p

Doing a #throwbackthursday…perhaps because the present isn’t so nice and we need more beauty to counter?!

I was recently digging through my stacks of partial felt to find some that I had dyed with a #bayeta #cochineal #naturaldye recipe for my brick wall earrings and pendants I posted yesterday. I learned how to get those reds way back while working at #lalanawools in Taos, New Mexico in 1998 from Luisa Gellenter.

In my stacks, I also found this little archive. At one time, actually for a long time, I had limited all my felt work to wool that I had naturally dyed. Often that was the finished piece, as I love a solid strike of color, but for a time I also dyed partial felt sheets for a spectrum of color for surface design and imagery such as can be seen in this color sampler I made in the early oughts.

I was inspired to work this way by the sheets of naturally colored wool that I could only imagine were used to create the sharp and detailed imagery on the large wall hanging (suspected use as such) from the #Pazyryk culture found in the Altai Mtns in Siberia circa 7th-2nd century BC.
Do you know what I speak of? The imagery on the cover of #theartofthefeltmaker, the publication by Mary Burkett in 1979 in relation to the touring exhibit of the same name? I was given this book in 2002 after learning differential shrinkage in weaving. And so it began for me, felting that is.

#strongfelt #fullspectrum #naturaldyes #naturalcolor #colorpallette #surfacedesign #feltimagery
#wetfelting #partialfelt #beforetimes

I have been squirreled away in my studio holding a

I have been squirreled away in my studio holding a lot of big feelings. I decided at the beginning of 2025 I was going to work on a collection of smaller objects this winter because I need the highs of more frequent finishes to balance the coldness. I’ve been working on a new batch of brick wall pendants and earrings. Thinking a lot about boundaries and the concept of protection vs isolation and wools qualities to absorb sound (that damn voice) and its nature to connect and bind when agitated. Currently, I am building a new collection of my trampoline style hoops because they are a favorite and I love their ear drum symbolism. I’m aiming for a STRONGFELT SHOP upload before the love holiday.

Always…but particularly these days, grateful to connect across borders in my Online & Onpoint! wet felting coursework. To meet each day discussing sensitivity of touch and encouraging the self-empowerment that comes with transforming materials in ones hands is my joy. Figuring out meetings with 9 different time zones for our Project 1 Zoom Design Reviews next week, not so much.
😆

#strongfelt #feltstrong #bigfeels #whatisfelt #boundaries #brickwalls #cochinealdye #bayetared #woolasmortar #freemotionstitching #soundabsorption #tympanicmembrane #felt #senses
#earrings #pendants #feltjewellery

Building new felt forms inspired by the collapse o

Building new felt forms inspired by the collapse of other systems. Yall know I walk my Osity 🐈 most days (as long as it’s above 50 F!) We’ve been collecting detritus on our neighborhood streets from all the downed poles that support electric, telephone and wifi since Hurricane Helene. Connectors captured my 👁️ Love the chunk, the flex, the transparency and the softness of this ring.
This was my Sunday.

#strongfelt #feltjewlery #whatisfelt #reconnecting #stitching #mending #hurricanehelene #detritus #anthropocene

Mending holes and bringing sides together. One th

Mending holes and bringing sides together.

One thing that inhibits me from effectually teaching techniques of free-motion stitching on dense and dimensional felt is an in-person hosting venue with a fleet of machines that have a knee lift in addition to more commonly understood needs such as feed dogs that drop and a darning foot. I demonstrated my use of this apparatus for stitching on thicker felt at a Surface Design Association Conference back in 2009. There are some conference DVD’s floating around in the world, but I think I’ll tackle this topic again…

The future Course 3 in my Online & Onpoint! coursework will address this approach to my STRONGFELT work among other techniques of texturing. The online format allows for more extensive time and practice than a workshop setting and the coordination involved needs that time. I’m going to have to have a macro lens over my shoulder focused on that needle and plate and keep my fingers out of the line of sight!

#strongfelt #sundaystitching #machinestitching #felt #freemotionmachineembroidery #darning #mending #surfacedesign @surface_design

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Contact

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