Wet Felting & Other Traditional Seasonal Skills Class Series with Laura Blankenship
People have been creating shelter, clothing, and beauty, and singing together while we do it before time began. Come remember some of these traditional ways by dipping your toes into wet felting, singing, and candlemaking. Teen and Adult.
Easy Expressive Wet Felted Hankies & Handcloths
(Prerequisite for Wet Felted Hats)
Cost: $50 (two for $90 – call for a discount!)
Time and date(s): Saturday, 10/17/26 from 1:00PM-4:00PM
Location: Art Lab
Skill level: Beginner-intermediate
Description: Play with color, shapes, wool, soap, and water to create bespoke handcloths or personal hankies as you learn the basics of flat wet felting.
Class will be mostly standing; some endurance and arm strength required to rub and roll wool for over an hour. Limit 6 students.
Other classes in this series:
Wet Felted Witchy Hats (Requires Previous Wet Felting Experience)
Saturday and Sunday October 24 and 25, from 12:00PM-3:30PM
Easy Expressive Nuno Felted Cloths & Patches (Prereq for Wet Felted Hats)
Saturday, November 14, from 1:00PM-4:00PM
Wet Felted Handwarmers (Prereq for Wet Felted Hats)
Saturday and Sunday, November 21 and 22, from 12:00PM-3:30PM
Wacky Elf Hats (Requires Previous Wet Felting Experience)
Saturday and Sunday, December 5 and 6, from 1:00PM-4:30PM
Tapered Beeswax Candle Making & Community Singing
Saturday, December 12, from 3:00PM-5:00PM
About the Instructor:
Laura Marie Blankenship’s wild, wooly work bridges the gap between the tactile craft of felting and the embodied art of abstract expressionism. Her art is deeply informed by her 8 years as a live music painter, teaching yoga and meditation, and time spent as a wilderness therapy field guide, and answering crisis/suicide hotline calls, with her formal background in Psychology from The College of William and Mary. She was awarded a scholarship and studio assistantship at the Penland School of Craft in 2015, is a frequent instructor of wet felting and needle felting at Earthskills Gatherings throughout the Southeast, and from 2022 to 2025, she served as a full-time public school art teacher. With painting names like “there is nothing that cannot be transformed into joy,” her current studio practice centers create action-painted abstracts that serve as victory cries (and sometimes desperate pleas) for emotional integration and personal transformation. Laura Marie Blankenship lives and works in Damascus, Virginia, where she continues to paint, teach, hike, bike, kayak, share beauty, create connection, and ask for guidance from the trees, trails, and beings in and around the South Holston River.