Jean Gauger is a Fiber Artist who creates handmade one of a kind art. She uses wool and silk to create unique items from wearable art to home decor using the process of felting and or nuno felting which incorporates silk or any other open weave fabric with wool.

Nuno felting is the most interesting and fascinating form of art. You take a fine merino wool and a piece of silk or any open weave fabric and fuse it together with warm soapy water and slowly agitating it by hand until you see the fibers of the wool coming through your open weave fabric. That is the felting process, now you shock the fibers by tossing and rolling it, which is called the fulling process. When this is done the silk fiber takes on a rushing effect, which is quite lovely.

Ms Gauger takes one of the most beloved insects of all, the butterfly, and incorporates it into clothing or wall hangings. Nature has the most wonderful palette from which many artists draw. By keeping it light, it maintains the drape of the silk making it a luxurious garment to wear.

Ms Gauger has been felting for years. Starting off as a knitter when she was a child, she has always had an obsession with wool. 7 years ago, she discovered felting and has not stopped! She attended College as an Art Education Major so, between craving to make art and her love of teaching, she has found her calling in life.
She says, "the best part of teaching is seeing the happy faces on my students as the take such pride in their success when they turn out an absolutely beautiful piece of wearable art!"

Me Gauger's mentors include Chris White the owner of New England Felting Supply and Author of the Famous "Uniquely Felt” a book every felter should own. Her expertise and guidance encouraged Jean take a 4 day class with Famed Linda Veilleux who was featured in "Threads" Magazine for her fabulous nuno seamless garments and Marianne DuBois another fantastic felter to make yardage and a cut and sew jacket. The class gave her the confidence to make a large piece - the butterfly shawl. When she showed my piece to Chris White she could not say enough about it. "I knew at that point I was on the right track," says Jean, "especially when she said it was the best piece of Nuno Felting she had ever seen!"

Ms Gauger has worked vigorously over the past 7 years producing some of her finest pieces and taking classes with Martien Van Zuijlen, Nicole Chazaud Telaar, Diane Christian. Jean's Buckeye Butterfly Shawl is in the book "500 Felt Objects" and, in the June issue of "Felt" an Australian Felting magazine, she wrote and photographed a tutorial for the nuno Journal Cover with nuno flowers. Recently, Jean instructed at the internationally known "Felters Fling" teaching a Butterfly Shawl workshop along side of many internationally known Felters such as Mariolgn Dahling from Bloom Felt who designs for Cirque du Soleil, Liz Clay who has worked with the famed designer Stella McCartney, Roderick Welch and Karoliina Arvilommi to name a few. Ms Gauger had taught numerous classes at New England Felting Supply in Massachusetts along with private and group classes in NYC, Connecticut and at Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton Massachusetts. An exhibit of her Butterfly shawls permiered at Davey Jones Gallery in Albany NY in Oct of 2011.

Jean currently teaches Nuno Felting day workshops, multiday workshops, and online classes. Her work can be found at www.sugarplumoriginals.biz, Ebay and Etsy along with retail stores and Galleries.