STRONGFELT works of Lisa Klakulak

And here’s a new round of projects designed by some of the recent participants in my Online Course 1 Foundational Structure. 👏 👏 👏 Wet Felting techniques in determining size, density and surface quality of solid forms, 2D planes and hollow forms for object encasement are connected into unique design compositions. The added twist of considering/controlling proportions, placement, weight distribution and flex for wearability, if so desired, offers a bundle of learning! So lovely that folded into this cohort was a felter I met teaching in Norway nearly 15 years ago and another from when I was teaching workshops from my home studio from 2014-2018. Always love seeing the unique mix of felt enthusiasts in each edition! Works pictured clockwise from top left corner: Sidsel Saeterhaug, Cat Babbie, Yael Rosenberg, felter prefers anonymity, Yael’s clasp design detail, Jennifer Jiang and a detail from Cat Babbie’s 1st project Excellent work!! 👏 👏 👏 The next Course 1 Edition 13 later this year is now open for enrollment. Links for signing up as well as to my website page with all the Online & Onpoint! Coursework details can be found in the instagram bio linktree 🔝 I’ll be plugging this more on the flipside of my upcoming in person workshops over the summer, but thought some would like to secure their spot and schedule in this 10 week course of study for October 11 - December 20 with access through March 7, 2027! #strongfelt #feltdesign #designingforshrinkage #wetfeltingtechnique #feltonline

Workshop Announcement 📢 Next Edition of STRONGFELT’s Foundational Structure Course in wet felting is October 11 - December 20, 2026. With access to the nearly 10 hrs of video, 40 pages of pdfs, participants’ design reviews and platform dialogue until March 7, 2027, you’ll be set up for the kind of material study and design guidance one would expect in a special topics university course. That was my idea in structuring the content of this series! Scroll through the close up module photos and consider this over view of the learning. Relation of weight to mass and density, alternative cores for building form and approaches to snug connections in Module 1. Repeatable cord diameter and length, connecting at various angles and directional agitation for holding curves in Module 2. Folding techniques for building various compact sculptural forms in Module 3. A bit of math to understand the variables of shrinkage and a tease of texture with incorporating other linear material elements in Module 4. Using that math to attain the felt quality and size of plane desired and methodology for connecting surface protuberances and channels in Module 5. Lastly, how to size up a layout in relation to expected shrinkage to encase objects in a contour revealing skin in Module 6. With having just wrapped up the last edition of Course 1, I’ve been adding new images of participants’ projects made by assembling these learned techniques in their own designs. Have a 👀 through the link in my instagram bio to /online-coursework/ and maybe see you in a few months?! #strongfelt #wetfelting #feltstructure #feltworkshops #feltschooled

Some fresh images for fresh courses offered by me, Lisa K, in Essen Belgium next year. It's REAL NICE to have somethings on the horizon to look forward to! 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 a template designed to encase the form in a taut felt skin. We'll learn about free motion stitching to add versatility to the shape of the opening + color and texture inspired by the surface qualities of your object. 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! This course does have a prerequisite of either having taken my Resist-based Pendant Course in person or the first course in my Online & Onpoint! Series on the topic of Foundational Structures. Check the link to my teaching schedule in my insta bio for more info and/or jump over to www.vrouwwolle.be #strongfelt #felt #feltworkshop #feltclass #feltschooled #lisaklakulak #feltobjects #feltencasementofobjects #feltjewelry #bezels #bails #feltpendants #felttubes #wetfelting #sculptingwool #fibersculpting #contemporaryfelt #finecraft

These have been joyful days in the studio and feeling grateful. I am putting plans together for the upcoming workshop on Advanced Pendants: Elaborate Bails and Bezels @vrouwwolle right now making some additional studies for participants’ learning. It’s one thing to be told this happens when these conditions are set and another when there is a visual, tangible object. I get the same excitement planning workshop learning as I do planning a piece of my work…altering materials and minds! There are a few seats still available in this workshop as it does have a prerequisite of either my Online Course 1 or the Resist-based Pendant Course I taught a handful of times in different venues across Europe. I am trying to step up what I share in a workshop and that means some basic skills need to be assumed so time can be best spent pushing the paradigm. It’s an extra special topic workshop, so if you’ve been on the fence…jump in. We’ll be responding to an objects colors in our making of partial felt with some color theory and blending. Participants can bring their own, but I will also have some extraordinary pieces of glass available. We’ll use the objects contours and surface patterns to design partial felt shapes for the bezel/window frame of the encasement and also protrusions in the differential shrinkage forming of the bail/channel from which the piece will hang. We’ll dig in to shrinkage considerations for adding these partial felt areas to our object encasements, how they effect the length, circumference and curve of our tubes and how adding free motion stitch effects shrinkage depending on direction of application. Big learning can and will come in small packages. So looking forward to seeing familiar faces and making unfamiliar pieces of felt! 3 weeks! #strongfelt #feltworkshops #onlinfeltingcourses #feltstudy

#strongfelt #studiochat #upcomingworkshops #sculptingfiber #differentialshrinkage @vrouwwolle @feutre_formation_france

Thought to share a bit about the project design aspect of my Online & Onpoint! Courses for those new to all things STRONGFELT or those who haven’t yet found the value in this approach to structuring learning. First, each concentric circle pictured represents a cohort of makers from an edition of Course 1 Foundational Structure and sometimes 2 groups depending on the year and type of participation. Learning is the real product, so to move in your own unique direction, not repeating something I have designed step-by-step. Participants are guided through very intentionally designed studies and post their results on the forum, ask questions, share observations, encourage one another, draw up a sketch of an idea, meet with me one-on-one on zoom to talk through different approaches and their composition based on the elements and principles of design, step in and make the piece, photograph it (I also offer tips on that in the course) and post it for a discussion/critique of the process and outcome. These reviews happen twice in a 10-week course (4th and 10th weeks) and are the only scheduled aspect to assure I can accommodate everyone in all the time zones. These projects that I am sharing here and also on my website’s /online-coursework/ page represent quality in material integrity, intention of design/ideation, diversity of results and good photography as my goal. Some folks just want to watch the videos/access the pdf handouts that drop on Sundays during the formal part of the course and access them for the additional 10 weeks. They do the making at their own pace and don’t join the cohort in the platform dialogue. Okay! Work pictured is born of this experience and permission has been granted to share their work and names on the socials and my website. I am looking forward to sharing images from the most recent cohort in a new outer ring soon. These makers works from edition 13 & 14 are on the website with names + alternate and detailed views. 🔗 in bio #strongfelt #feltstudy #feltdesign

Announcing the first newsletter of 2026 in your inboxes and if you want to check it out before signing up to receive them...link in my instagram bio linktree. I am finding it again! That is #flow in my own studio work since having hand surgery last December 2025. I wanted to start up again with a piece about handwork, pace, space and fluidity of motion. Therefore, #wetfelting of course, but also using rhythmic #cursive and #hollowforming with differential shrinkage to make a text based flow channel. Yes, it’s a channel, a tube and a potential bail for a pendant...on topic for my upcoming in person #feltworkshop on Advanced Pendants: Elaborate Bezels & Bails @vrouwwolle in Belgium in June! Flow brings to mind the cultural tradition of #nameplates and also #puffypaint (yes I was an 80's kiddo). Unlike that hardened 3D material made of who knows what, this piece is actually hair, soft, puffy, porous, flexible and #strongfelt! #fiberart #textiles #contemporaryfelt #finecraft

The 🌱 spring 🌱 pulse is picking up! Look for STRONGFELT’s first quarter newsletter popping up in your inbox this coming week. And for those who are currently in or have already completed Course 1: Foundational Structure, an additional email invitation will arrive with the link to join this 5th Edition of Course 2 in the late summer. New to all things STRONGFELT? Check the linktree in my insta bio 🔝 and sign up for the news! Join this cohort of skilled feltmakers August 23 - November 8, 2026 who have completed Course 1 and are ready to go a little farther down the rabbit hole of wet felting! 16 hrs of my video instruction and 78 printable pdfs + access to me for questions & 2 supported projects! Focus on making varying thickness of layout and densities of partial felt, understanding shrinkage variations based on size of shapes cut from these sheets and how they can be used to define solid forming, surface design and sculpt hollow form with differential shrinkage. Participants have an additional 11 weeks after the formal course (until Jan 24, 2027) to access the platform videos + the images shared and discussion in the chat forum. #strongfelt #lisaklakulak #wetfelting #feltworkshops #woolisamazing

Of all the felt-based cuff bracelets I’ve seen, NONE of them have given me goosebumps quite like Lisa Klakulak’s ‘Blue Reach’. This wet-felted merino wool MASTERPIECE is more sculpture than it is adornment; its strange abstract body of spheroid fruits, pierced disks and feeler-like protrusions giving it the appearance of a flamboyant sea-slug, a dense web of mycelium roots or some magnified water-borne organism. The hardest thing to believe here is that Blue Reach was physically constructed by human HANDS as opposed to having grown slowly in some exotic pool, or symbiotically- (mistletoe-like!) in the crook of an oak tree. If I wore this, I wouldn’t be able to stop TOUCHING it! 😍 @feltstrong

All systems GO! These two stacked workshops exploring structural surface design and focused on constructing hollow felt forms by fiber welding edges of partially felted cylinders, panels and shapes will be running this summer. A few seats remain available in each course. The first course is in Essen, Belgium @vrouwwolle from June 6-10. www.vrouwwolle.be for more info and to enroll. The second, longer course digging a bit deeper into surface design is in Western North Carolina @penlandschool from July 26-August 7. #strongfelt #lisaklakulak #wetfelting #surfacedesign #sculptingfiberform

Sunday morning rumination over my coffee…welcome in. I pulled this first image up from my archives for the talk I presented yesterday about cycles of space as a construct of time. Thoughts on revolving around a life giving entity as we spin on our own axis transformed into the seasons of life, patterns of growth, deterioration, repair, sediments, and sentiments. This piece, “Locks,” tends to the stage of compression and lack of movement in matter, both that which is sculpted, but also the sculpting of ourselves. It began as metal armature of a pair of hands back in 2012 and was skinned with felt in the summer of 2019 to incorporate a mass of knotted tissue. Over the last weeks I have been working with clay for the first time since 2002. It has been a wonderful exercise in fine motor skills, plasticity and shrinkage as I continue the rehabilitation of elasticity and strengthening of my thumb joint post carpal metacarpal arthroscopy. Recently, students in the 3D Design Course I’m teaching had been assigned a five step transformation project focused on form and texture with the middle object representing 50% of the character of the first and last object in the series. Inspired by the objects one keeps, Osity cat’s toy mouse morphed into a personalized shoe last for a conversation about production and the handmade. #strongfelt #whatisfelt #handmade #transformation #cyclesofspacemeasuresoftime

Excited to share my slide talk, “Time as Cycles of Space,” with members of the International Felt Makers Association during the organization’s Annual General Meeting next Saturday, March 28. Time is the theme of the AGM 2026. Within life, a studio practice and the transformation of matter at the hand of the maker, time materializes as shifts and cycles of space that mirror larger planetary movements and concepts of geologic time. Join Lisa Klakulak as she presents this thread of thought in the making of several pieces of recent STRONGFELT work for a discussion of technical approaches that inspired ideas and ideas that inspired technical approaches. This will be a live slide presentation, followed by Q & A. For more information about @internationalfeltmakers membership benefits. #strongfelt #feltmaking #lisaklakulak #feltmaker #artisttalk