Artists: Katrina Woelk Balzer, Anna Goertzen Loeppky, Tara Epp
Bios:
Katrina Woelk Balzer grew up in Winkler, MB and now lives in Winnipeg. Katrina has always enjoyed making and crafting and while her interests have evolved over time (friendship bracelets to scrapbooking to card making), one interest she has always enjoyed is sewing. She took lessons as a kid, and then came back to it every once in a while until just before the pandemic when she decided to try garment sewing. The pandemic ended up being the perfect time to dive in. One aspect of garment sewing that intrigued Katrina was the idea of slow fashion and the desire to be more aware of where clothing comes from and how it’s made. It was through this that she saw the One Year One Outfit challenge and decided it would be a fun way to get to know the fibreshed and learn new skills along with her friends.
Anna Goertzen Loeppky grew up in Abbotsford, BC and now lives in Winnipeg. Anna has always enjoyed crafting and creating with friends. Anna enjoys learning new skills from others and has explored throwing functional pottery, sewing garments and paper crafts. Anna was intrigued by dye plants after learning about them in one of the OYOO meetings, she found it meditative to pick the coreopsis blooms throughout the summer to dry them for future projects.
Tara Epp grew up in Saskatchewan and now lives in Winnipeg. She began crocheting when she was about 10 years old, taught by her older sister. In her preteen years, she had a keen interest in sewing and made herself a few dresses, but soon found greater enjoyment in the process of crocheting. Her projects have moved from small accessories such as toques and scarves, to blankets, and eventually, to garments and household items. As she learned more about sustainability and slow fashion in recent years, Tara became more interested in making items with natural fibers and choosing projects that would be practical and long-lasting. The One Year One Outfit Challenge felt like the perfect way to learn more about this practice, local resources, and extend and develop her skills.
Woolen Clogs:
Raw wool roving from The Last Dance Ranch
Light grey wool from sheep, Magni
Cream wool from sheep, Celeste
Dark grey wool from sheep, Poppy
Pattern and tutorial by Rasa Eidenaite-Agejeva (Etsy shop: Makeshoes)
Water from Treaty 3
Natural olive oil soap from Art Soap Life
All three of us made a pair of our own clogs through wet felting. None of us had ever done any felting before, and this was a skill we were interested in learning through this project! With all three of us returning to school in the fall of 2021, we set aside a Saturday to make our clogs. Little did we know, the process would take about 10 hours and be a significant physical workout!
We set up in Anna’s basement with plastic tables placed over the floor drain. We had many laughs throughout the day when our clogs looked like they were made for feet multiple sizes bigger than our own, and as we rubbed and rolled the wool, blasting music to keep our energy up.
We had a great day, but felting may not be something we do again soon. If we try it again one day, we will know better what hard work we are getting ourselves into!
Crochet Sweater:
Undyed alpaca yarn from Enchanted Grove Alpacas in brown and light fawn
Wooden buttons from Salvaged Earth Designs
This sweater was made by Tara, who was an avid crocheter prior to this project. However, this is the first garment she has made without using a pattern (and first experience with buttons and buttonholes)! In an effort to make something practical that would be worn over and over again, the design was inspired by the popular Patagonia sweater.
The sweater came along slowly throughout the year, made up solely of half double crochet stitches. Although she wanted to use a more complex and interesting stitch pattern, half double crochet best-suited the desired appearance and texture of the sweater. In the process, there was a lot of crocheting rows and pulling them out again, adjusting the fit and placement of buttonholes.
It is sure to be a warm and well-worn garment in Tara’s wardrobe!
Leather Wallet:
Tanned cow and bison hide leather scraps from Earth and Hide
The wallet was made by Katrina and Anna, this was their first time working with leather. They got an assortment of shapes, sizes and colours of leather scraps from Chuck of Earth and Hide (a small Manitoba business). Chuck gets his leather locally and it’s tanned at Miami Leather Co. Our wallet design was inspired by the Wilder Goods Bi-fold card wallet that is made locally in Winnipeg.
Katrina and Anna used Katrina’s sewing machine (carefully!) for this project. Unfortunately, the machine did not like some of the types of leather, leading to only one wallet made instead of two. They are still learning the best method for sewing leather without too many tools.
General Reflections:
We all came to this project with different skills and interests. In deciding and designing our three items, we discussed the skills we wanted to work on, and the materials we wanted to use and that we thought would be accessible to us. In the end, we decided that we would try felting clogs together, Tara would use her already established crocheting skills to make the sweater, and Anna and Katrina would try out their sewing skills with leather. We each were able to use a little of what we already knew, and learn new skills together.
Gathering materials was a project all on its own! We all have done quite a bit of making with different materials, and each of us value using local, ethically-sourced and sustainable materials for our different makes. Despite this, we did not know the options in the fibreshed very well, and had to search for the materials we needed. We came across the leather through Instagram when Chuck (Earth and Hide leather) invited people to use the remnants from his project, and found the roving for the clogs through searching the Pembina Fibreshed supplier list. We enjoyed making new connections and learning about local people producing all kinds of materials.
A skill that Tara was interested in developing for this project was spinning wool. Along with the purchase of pre-spun yarn from Enchanted Grove Alpacas, Tara also purchased 200g of roving and a supported spindle from Mawdsley Fibre Arts. Although she intended to have some spinning lessons with Helen Mawdsley, it was not able to happen due to COVID-19 restrictions and general busyness. She has learned some basic skills by watching Youtube, but is still very much in the beginning stages of learning, and was not able to use any hand-spun yarn for this project.
Although we did not end up using them for this project, we were also inspired early in the year to purchase seeds for coreopsis, safflower, and indigo dye plants. We were able to harvest many coreopsis blooms, a few safflower blooms, but our indigo did not come up. We have dried our blooms and will look forward to experimenting with natural dyeing in the coming year!
