Hello and Welcome to Natural Fibre Arts

Hello and Welcome to Natural Fibre Arts

I everyone and welcome to Natural Fibre Arts! I'm so glad you have found us and hope that you will pop back in regularly to see what we have been up to.

I'm Cheryl and I started Natural Fibre Arts after returning to live in Australia from Doha, Qatar where my husband, children and I lived for four years.

It was in Doha that I started to knit again after a break of many years where I ventured into other crafts like embroidery, crazy patchwork, card making and scrapbooking. I was invited along to a knitting group that met each week and I remember thinking that I really didn't want to knit, especially as the temperatures outside would get up to 50C during the day, and so I asked if I could bring along my embroidery. Well that only lasted one week and I was soon intrigued by a lady knitting a tiny little piece of work on 5 pointy needles. Of course it was a sock but I'd never seen knitting done like this before and yarns had come a long way too. These ladies were knitting with the most gorgeous hand dyed and luxury yarns and I knew I just had to give knitting another try.

Originally I learned to knit when I was a child from my grandmother and my mum. I knit myself a few items and then when I had children I also knit for them but it was never my first love. I just loved all craft, however these days I am a complete knitting and fibre addict and have been knitting solidly for the last 9 years. I do crochet from time to time but find it hard on my hands so I prefer to knit. I also learned to spin on a drop spindle from that same knitting group and have since restored an old 1970's Ashford Traditional wheel that I spin on sometimes and am looking forward to getting into even more.

I became fascinated by natural dyeing as I had the Souks in Doha at my fingertips where there were all sorts of amazing spices, herbs and other unusual things that I thought I could extract dye from and so I started doing a lot of internet research and dabbling in natural dyes. It was when we returned to live in Australia that I gave protein dyes a try and now I love to work with both.

I started Natural Fibre Arts many years ago, back in 2009, dyed a little bit of wool, made a few stitch markers and even had some sales but then went back to work full time and didn't have the time to dedicate to an at home business as well. Nearly 2 years ago I decided to relaunch my Etsy shop and take this dyeing business seriously. In January this year I was able to retire from my day job and take on my fibre business full time and so here we are. My eldest daughter Vanessa is my partner in crime in the dyeing side of the business. She is very arty and comes up with the most amazing colourways that I'm sure you are just going to love. 

For now I still have an Etsy shop but in time I will be transferring everything to this website as I want to be able to connect with you all through a blog and show you all my adventures into dyeing, spinning, knitting and other fibre fun. From time to time I will also be featuring other fibre artists including pattern designers, knit and crochet artists, spinners and weavers.

So thank you for reading through to the end and I hope you will come back and visit again soon. You can also find us on Instagram where I post frequent updates and on Facebook where we have a Natural Fibre Arts page and also a group page. Come on over and join us there if you haven't already.

Cheryl Xxx

 

 

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