Welcome

 The Felted Dog is our passion hobby business.  We learned the love of crafts at an early age from our Granny and Mummy.  We put on our first craft show well over thirty years ago.  This fun second job doesn't quite keep kibble in the dog bowls and warm blankets in their beds, so we are blessed to have  cool "bill-paying" jobs too.  Tracey is an elementary school art teacher and teaches the power of art to over 200 students daily.  Monique is a park ranger and manages the local state park.

After random shows over the years, we started a  more specific hobby business called "Gone to the Dogs" in 2003 and concentrated on homemade gourmet dog treats inspired by two adorable Cocker Spaniels named Bonnie and Clyde.    

After taking a break, the crafting bug bit again in 2011.  By this time, we weren't satisfied with just dog treats.   We wanted to explore our new obsession:  felted wool fiber.  So...The Felted Dog was born and soon became a less than obvious blend of fiber and dogs.  It made perfect sense to two perfectly crazy sisters.  

We have evolved to a purely "wooly" enterprise and discontinued the dog treats in 2014...we want to focus all our energies on all things fiber.  We keep the Felted Dog name as a nod to our entrepreneurial  beginnings as schlepers of dog treats.

First, let us clear the air.....our fiber goodies are not made with dog hair!  We use mostly sheep's wool, but also alpaca when we can get  it at a good price.   In fact, it is our goal to create one-of-a-kind felted items that are affordable...sort of a "felt for the common man" kind of thing!  To keep our prices down and keep our items unique, we repurpose thrift store belts for the purse buckles and scour garage sales and antique stores for unique vintage buttons and other supplies.

We use a couple of felting techniques to create our goodies.  All of the purses are hand crocheted and then "fulled" for the felted end product. Fulled basically means to shrink and agitate the project in hot water.  (WHO KNEW that when you shrunk your favorite sweater...you were actually felting!)  Tracey is the crochet queen...aka the happy hooker.  She is a prolific crocheter and can come up with amazing purse designs on the fly.

Monique is the needle-felter.  Needle felting is a technique that takes wool roving (the processed wool used in spinning) and a special needle with barbs.  The wool is poked with the needle and the fibers are fused together.  The more you poke, the more the wool forms into a shape.  You can actually sculpt with fiber...cool beans!

The final felting technique we use on occasion, is the repurposing of old wool sweaters and blankets.  Old wool blankets are transformed into dog tugs and old sweaters are shrunk into unique gift items, flowers and keepsakes.