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Rachel Benson poses with her award-winning felted 2D and 3D art at a 2021 event in Saco, Maine. (COURTESY RACHEL BENSON)
A family of woodland creatures enjoys a festive Christmas dinner, with the entire display made out of felt. (COURTESY RACHEL BENSON)
Rachel Benson shows it's possible to make a two-dimensional painting using felting techniques, like this whimsical giraffe eating flowers. (COURTESY RACHEL BENSON)
Bailey the dog is one of many bespoke custom art creations Rachel Benson makes for clients of their pets. (COURTESY RACHEL BENSON)
A menagerie of animals big and small can be made out of felt. (COURTESY RACHEL BENSON)
Felt isn’t just for kindergarten anymore.
Acclaimed, award-winning felting artist Rachel Benson teaches felting classes to kids, teens, and adults in Leominster, Groton, Harvard, and other towns in north central Massachusetts and New Hampshire. She also teaches live and recorded over Zoom with kits shipped or picked up curbside in Groton or Harvard.
Benson makes and sells one-of-a-kind premade fiber art and custom bespoke pieces using a variety of felting techniques, such as three-dimensional guinea pigs, dogs, donuts, clusters of stemmed flowers, gnomes, bees, geodes, mushroom houses, raccoons, and foxes, in various sizes, as well as two-dimensional painting of a variety of subjects.
“Felting is the most versatile medium I’ve worked with. You can make wall art, sculptures, and functional art like clothes or accessories. It’s easy to travel with and it’s relaxing. It’s not intimidating. You can try something and easily undo it and try again. Also there is just this charm about felted items that draws me in and makes me smile,” Benson said.
Benson said that felting is a blanket term for multiple techniques, such as needle felting which uses a barbed needle, and welt felting with soap and water. Despite being very different forms of felting, they can be “combined to create art with even more texture and depth” and both techniques are about tangling the fibers together and shrinking the wool to create a solid item that’s either 2D or 3D.
She has two Leominster classes at A Place to Weave on June 4 and June 11, and then will resume her regular classes held every Sunday there in the fall. Benson holds classes at venues in Groton including Periwinkle Glassworks and The Prescott School, and with the Groton Dunstable after school program. In Harvard, she teaches at The Fiber Loft and at Fivesparks; Benson has classes at Fivesparks in June and holds different classes there several times a month, including every school early release day. She has other classes in Hollis, New Hampshire.
This summer, she will be running camps for kids at Camp Creative in Groton, the First Parish Church of Groton, Good Pickin Farm in Westford, and HollisArtspace in Hollis. She’s doing one adult summer camp on Star Island.
Benson said, “My favorite part about teaching and selling my felted creations is seeing people smile and get excited! There is something so magical about felting and I feel so grateful to be able to share it with people!”
The age range to learn felting is nine and up, with adult classes starting around age 16, but Benson said that attendees “don’t need to be an artistic person to do felting.”
Benson has been felting so long that she can’t remember exactly when she started. She said her first clear memory of trying it was in a mixed media sculpture class that introduced felting. “That experience really showed me how versatile felting was and I gradually experimented more and more with the medium,” she said.
When she started her business she was selling handmade abstract weavings that looked like spiderwebs, which incorporated some felting but was mostly yarn, until it became entirely about felting.
Now, to be an artist, an educator, and to run a small business as a full-time job, she has to wear “a lot of different hats and remember lots of different things”, with her life full of “lots of to-do lists.” She also has to plan out far in advance; it’s not even summer yet, but all classes are scheduled and she’s already getting requests for the fall.
Most of Benson’s custom orders tend to be 3D replicas or portraits of people’s pets but she gets all kinds of random requests like custom wall pieces and real or imagined animals. Most recently she’s done a lion, a set of pet cats, and a fox riding a skateboard. Commissions take her about 4-6 weeks and instructions on how to order can be found on her website.
She said adding a Zoom class option at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is what “really skyrocketed” her business. She was hesitant at first about being on camera, but pushed past her shyness and went for it, now believing it was the best decision she’s made because her “clientele grew substantially” plus “how positive it was to have something fun to look forward to while being stuck at home” and put energy into for both her and her students.
Although she does less Zoom classes now, some of her pupils prefer to see her demonstrations on camera, live too far away to make it to an in-person class, like recorded lessons to be able to pause as needed, or is a “busier person that wants to give felting a try but isn’t sure they can make it to a scheduled time.”
Pickup kits offered for Zoom classes include a duck, owl, bird and nest, and painting with felting wool.
Benson offers private classes for 1-2 people and felting parties for groups like families, social clubs, community groups, and birthdays both over Zoom and traveling in-person for kids, adults, and mixed groups with all materials provided. She also travels around to different libraries and senior centers. Benson said she’ll travel up to 45 minutes from Groton or Hollis or further for a small added fee, but she loves traveling and sharing this art form so she’s rarely said no.
Originally from Groton, she recently moved to Hollis, New Hampshire after teaching in the area for a while and wanting access to the art studio and shop at Hollis ArtSpace. She graduated with a Bachelor’s of Fine Art in Sculpture with a minor in Technical Theater focusing in prop design at Keene State College in New Hampshire.
Benson is “really happy with my current track.” Her goals are to continue to add more venues for her classes and sales of her art, and to share the medium of felting with more people. She would also love to put more energy into creating and selling her own artwork, because even though she loves teaching, it “has taken priority and I’d like to strike more of a balance.”
For those kids (or adults) who feel the spark of felting like she does, she advises that they “don’t be afraid to experiment.” She said she’s “learned so much from making random creations outside of my comfort zone” and suggests budding artists “make something every day even if it’s something small” because “all art has to go through an awkward stage; don’t quit, see it through and I promise it will evolve into something you are happy with.”
“I love this medium [of felting] so much! Everyone needs to try it at least once because it’s so different from other art forms,” she said. “I love seeing people leave proud of themselves and that they created.”
Benson attends a few craft fairs throughout the year. Upcoming events include Old Home Days in Hollis on Sept. 9, the 11th Annual Craft Festival at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard on Sept. 23-24, Tower Hill Botanical Garden on Oct. 21-22, Worcester Center for Crafts Holiday Festival of Crafts on Nov. 24-26, and back to Fruitlands for their Holiday Artisan Fair on Dec. 2-3.
Felt Poking For more information on classes or to purchase art, felting kits, or gift cards, go to thefiberweb.com or see Benson’s Instagram at @thefiberweb and Facebook @fiberartbyrachel.