2013 Maiwa Textile Symposium

The Art of the Headress

Jessica de Haas

Maiwa Loft: Above the Net Loft, Granville Is. Vancouver BC

This workshop is the perfect opportunity to make a highly fashionable headdress for a costume party or special event. 

In this fun, creative, three-day workshop, participants will learn construction and millinery techniques to make a comfortable and durable mixed-media headdress. Different types of bases and attachments will be covered, and students will learn the process of fulling sheets of merino pre-felt to shape, sculpt, manipulate, twist, and braid for adornment. The class will explore many embellishing techniques such as needle felting, making three-dimensional flowers, embroidery, and appliqué. A variety of materials such as raw wool, felted wool, buckram, fabrics, feathers, lace, and beads will be used.

Jessica will encourage a well thought-out and meticulously crafted sculptural headdress.

Instructor Bio

Jessica de Haas has had a life-long fascination with fibre arts. It may have started when she received a Fisher-Price loom for her eighth birthday and wove her first piece.

Growing up rurally in the interior of British Columbia gave her a great appreciation for the beauty of the natural world and nurtured her creativity and imagination. When she was a teenager, she discovered batik and started her first clothing company. At 18 years of age, she went to Indonesia to study with a family of batik artists. This was the beginning of a series of travels involving grassroots study and involvement in the local communities she visited.

Formally, she studied fibre arts at Kootenay School of the Arts in Nelson, BC. In 2003 she started her felt clothing line, Funk Shui, and she has been creating and selling out of her Granville Island atelier since 2006. www.funkshuifelt.com