TALLER DE SOMBRERERÍA ARTESANAL EN FIELTRO

The Club of seniors offers an artisanal felt hat making workshop led by artisan Lesley Boohncke, starting Wednesday, October 14. This course provides a hands-on approach to artisanal felt hat making, guiding each participant from loose fiber to a finished hat. We will work with merino wool, starting directly from the fiber. In the first phase, a felt capeline will be handmade, forming the textile base of the hat. In the second phase, each piece is blocked on traditional hat blocks using steam, tension, and manual shaping. Finally, each hat is completed by caring for seams, edges, ribbons, and finishes. Felt is one of the oldest known textile techniques. Unlike other fabrics, it does not require a loom: through water, soap, friction, and movement, wool fibers intertwine to form a sturdy, warm, and moldable fabric. Traditional millinery combines this textile knowledge with the blocking craft, using wooden hat blocks, steam, and specific tools to transform the capeline into a finished hat. Today this craft has almost disappeared in Gran Canaria. Lesley Bohncke is the island’s only craftswoman with the official FEDAC craft certificate in millinery, making this course also a chance to transmit and keep alive a rarely seen artisanal knowledge. Lesley Bohncke is a textile artist, craftswoman and milliner specializing in wool and felt. She works at transforming wool through artisanal methods, with special emphasis on Gran Canaria’s local wool, blending research, artistic creation, and the transmission of crafts. She has extensive experience teaching felt and millinery courses for institutions, municipalities, and Canary and European organizations, and leads projects like LanaLAB, focused on researching and promoting local wool and its contemporary possibilities.