Hello and welcome to QaraQul’s!

Thank you for giving a bit of your precious time to read these lines here!

About QaraQul’s Shop

This online shop challenges to deliver quality handmade products at accessible prices and moreover to serve and satisfy your feelings of uniqueness, aesthetics and beauty. So I will try my best to fulfill these wishes of yours!

Here you will find a variety of colorful, vibrant felted and nuno felted items, all handcrafted using the wet felting technique. I am trying to keep this online store updated as often as I can, however please bear in mind that, since all handcrafted items depend largely on experimentation, the special mood, feeling and inspiration of the creator, it would be unrealistic to promise a daily update!

However what can I promise and offer is that here you have the rare opportunity to experience a spectrum of colors combined with a variety of materials and moreover fresh and unrepeatable items, as I prefer each of them to remain unique to me and to you!

About QaraQul and felting

It started just because of a book that fell in my hands! I love water and bubbles so I said “why not”! While working on this I also loved wool! I cannot compare it to any other fabric except silk which I also use. The combination can be magnificent giving not only a nice aesthetic but also a feeling of warmness and coziness.

Felting gives me the opportunity to express myself in freedom, relax and ultimately find myself in a state which has many similarities to meditation!

Often my inspiration derives from long observations of nature. When I escape from the city I usually prefer to find myself close to the sea or lying in the shade of a tree surrounded by plants, flowers etc. whatever colorfully fulfilling. There is also my favorite place to felt although at times difficult.

The colors, which I use, frequently reflect my mood at that specific time or are expressions of non verbal communication since I believe in the power of colors, images, representations and actions sometimes more than in the power of words. It depends…

Personally I love music, thus most of my items are created while listening to an album or having a long musical session by one of my favorite artists or groups and usually the item is named after the song which inspired me the most.

During these years of felting experimentation and involvement, the moments I enjoyed the most were the ones that I felted together with children in the context of occupational therapy. Except the skills which some of them acquired, the most impressive thing was their enthusiasm, spontaneity and amazement on how from something that it looks like a game in its process, can somebody create beautiful things with a practical use! I really loved it and I am longing to repeat it!

What is felting? Felting is one of the earliest forms of textile processing. Asian nomadic tribes started spreading all over the continent thousands of years ago. Wool becomes felt when it is subjected to moisture, heat, and pressure. Hot soapy water makes the wool slippery, and causes tiny scales on the fiber to “open up”. The scales prevent the fibers from backing up again after they slide across each other; with agitation, the fibers get hopelessly tangled together.

What is nuno-felting? Nuno means “woven fabric” in Japanese. The technique was discovered by the Australian Polly Sterling and named by her Japanese assistant. In the nuno-felting technique is used also soapy hot water. However the difference from the felting technique is that in nuno-felting a woven fabric with one or more layers of wool and natural fibers such as silk, cotton and viscose are felted together. The combination of wool in thin layers and silk gives a very light and airy, sometimes even sheer fabric.

a BIG THANK YOU for your interest!

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