Side Street Studio Blog | The best art that B.C. can offer

Deb Dumka wrote “I am a textile artist and craftsperson living and working in the spectacular natural setting of Texada Island, BC. My textile work, grown from a life long love of functional fabric things, is shaped by my distant background in electrical engineering and more current Textile Studies at the Anna Templeton Centre, College of the North Atlantic, St. John’s, NL.

I am interested in landscape and creating an emotional response through colour and pattern.
My line of boiled wool felt handbags  are produced in my home based studio from yarns I both dye and knit.
My felted wool bags are hand knit into large bags and then “felted” into much smaller bags. Felting is a process that ends in the bag being “shrunk” down in size, and the wool fibers “condensed” making them tight and strong for long lasting wear and durability.

In the all natural-felting process, (no chemicals have been used in this process) the wool fibers lock together to form a thick fabric. Each felted bag comes out unique – part of the process is letting the wool do what it wants, and form its shape all on its own! These bags are naturally water resistant and very strong. They will last a long time and always look magnificent.

I take great inspiration for the organic forms of my bags from the stones of the shingle beach outside my front door, and for my colours, from the west coast viewpoint containing ocean, forest, mountain and sky”.

You can see more of Deb’s magnificent and stylish bags at www.sidestreetstudio.com