FeltLOOM Felting Machine
Lanette Freitag and her husband own and operate a cattle and fibre animal farm in the Bluegrass Region of Central Kentucky. She worked in the corporate world, employed in information technology as a systems analyst, manager and consultant for 25 years. Today, she is president of FeltLOOM, Inc.
She began to work with fibre when they raised llamas and alpacas in 1987 and early 1990s. She found the characteristics of various fiber breeds to be extremely interesting and challenging. Each breed and individual animal within a breed produced different results. After beginning with spinning and knitting, she found felting provided the most opportunity for her creativity. She worked as a wet felter for many years, then began to experiment with needle felting in the late 1990s.
The couple developed several tools for needle felting and saw an opportunity for a needle-felting machine to produce felted fabric. There was not a machine available for the fiber artist, so they set out to develop a felting machine that would provide the quality and productivity needed for the fiber artist and crafter. This led to the development of FeltLOOM®. They received a US utility patent in 2008 on a felting machine for fiber artist.
Lanette continues to develop needle felted products and kits utilizing the fabric produced by the FeltLOOM®. She works with many fibers to accent the felted characteristics of the finished product. She is a juried fibre artist and has been a contributing designer for Create and Decorate Magazine. www.feltloom.com
Stay tuned for details on Lanette’s fall 2013 classes tomorrow…