I’m Anne Vincent, I was born in Atlanta.
I’ve been interested in making things since I was a small child.
I probably started sewing when I was four or five, and I’ve explored all kinds of making.
But fibers are what I really love.
My maternal grandmother would stand outside the department stores and clothing stores
and sketch the latest fashions and go home and make them.
I always wanted to go to art school, so I went to the University of Georgia, so I graduated
with a bachelor in fine arts and a concentration in interior design, which I did for the first
35 years in my career.
Half a dozen of us designer friends took a Saturday course at Chastain Park to felt a little purse.
And my sister recalls me coming home and calling her, and saying, “I’ve found what I want to do!"
And so I began to explore felting more and more.
At the end of 2014, I decided to retire from interior design, and focus solely on creating felted wearables.
Felting is the process of the wool working its way through the two layers of silk top and bottom.
And I’m talking specifically about Nuno or hybrid felting, which is what I do mostly.
You’re using the qualities of the materials to allow you to combine them in a new way.
There are many different types of animal fibers that will felt, but the best one I have found is Merino wool.
My typical process is that I get inspired by something I’ve seen in nature, I also
get inspiration from fashion, and the colors and patterns and textures.
I go into my studio, I pull out my color samples, I decide on a color scheme, I wanted to learn
how to dye in order to get the colors I wanted.
So I took an online dye course and from that, I began to take other courses on other families of dyes.
So all in all, I use probably six or eight different families of dyes.
Most of my work is laid out in a geometric way.
After determining the size before felting, I will lay out the base piece.
Then I put down the first layer of Merino wool, then I lay out the final layer of silk
on top of the Merino wool, and that’s what I call the decorative side.
All the garments and wraps are reversible, but one side tends to be more plain than the other.
Once I get it laid out, I wet it with a mixture of olive oil soap and then I put plastic on top of it.
I put a wet towel in the middle, roll the whole thing up and I wet that and throw it
in the dryer with two or three wet towels and I let it go on low heat for usually about an hour.
But then I take the piece out of the plastic and out of the towels and throw it back in
the dryer so that it fulls.
Fulling is what you do after it’s felted to make it shrink and give it that fabulous texture.
I need about 20 yards of fabric for a jacket.
And start to finish, laying it out until it’s on the mannequin to dry is about four days.
My reward for working hard is to go learn some new aspect of felting or dyeing.
One of the things that is so exciting to me is when I learn a new technique and all of that
informs then what I do.
What keeps me doing it is that I love it.
And I feel very fortunate that I have a passion for it.
And if I’m not required to be doing something else, I’m going to be in my studio making.
I am Anne Vincent, and I make art by felting and dyeing.