By Maureen Green, Staff Writer It’s a terrible feeling to accidentally put a wool sweater in the washing machine and then take it out to find it has turned into a felt jumper for your baby.
Pat DiPasqua of Clay is one of the few people in the Syracuse area who specializes in felt making. Her colorful work has brought her hope and satisfaction after a series of devastating life failures.
“I was in a coma, and when I woke up, the doctors said my brain was damaged and I couldn’t work or even read anymore,” said DiPasqua, now 62. The Cornell University graduate was about to call you crazy, but decided to prove the doctor wrong.
DiPasqua fought it by reading everything she could and doing daily physical rehabilitation exercises that left her time for mental exercise. Soon after, she began working again in administrative work at a Syracuse law firm, but fate dealt her another blow.
I would often faint and fall. I had vision problems, body aches and the fatigue was just unbelievable. “But then the feeling subsided for a while and I thought maybe I had the flu,” she said.
But the symptoms kept returning, and now she began hiding her mysterious condition from her employers.
Ten years later, DiPasqua earned a master’s degree in special education and took a job teaching in the North Syracuse School District. While researching craft projects for her fourth-grade students, she stumbled upon needle felting, a process that turns fluffy wool into a moldable material. According to northeastfeltmakers.org, there is evidence that felt making in Central Asia dates back 5,000 years.
DiPasqua thought the method was too difficult for her 9-year-old students, but she was fascinated by it. She wants to try it herself.
“So few people know about it that you try to explain it to them and they don’t understand,” she said. “They want to know what machine can do it, and I tell them I do it by hand.”
DiPasqua takes a fluffy piece of merino wool (similar to a marshmallow) and pierces it a thousand or more times with a special needle until the fibers become something hard and dense. He adds more wool, piercing it with the needle to attach it to the first piece, adding color, texture, and shape.
Felt can be used to make not only bags, scarves, and other wearable art pieces, but also more structural items such as three-dimensional flower arrangements, dolls, and animals.
DiPasqua tries and enjoys her new hobby, but her health is still not right. Treatments for her epilepsy have failed, and she wonders if she was misdiagnosed.
She was eventually taken to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester and diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, not epilepsy.
“I was very sad,” she said. Unable to cope with the physical demands of teaching, she also left the teaching profession.
She found that she missed the daily interaction with people, so she threw herself into felting, hoping to one day teach needle felting.
Teresa Bishop, owner of Salt City Yarn and Fiber Mill on State Fair Boulevard and a local fiber supplier, was thrilled to host Pats’ class.
“It’s a growing trend,” Bishop said. “You create a human being, and then you say, ‘Maybe I can create a cat, and if I create a cat, maybe I can create a dog.’ Once you start, you become addicted.”
“If you’re nervous, thrust more and the stimulation will become deeper and the pattern will become tighter,” she said. If you relax, the opposite will happen. The pattern will become softer.
DiPasqua recently opened a small retail shop at 25 Syracuse Street in Baldwinsville to sell her items. Her shop, Pats of Clay, is part of the craft co-op Cottage Designs and is housed in a converted home. She’s already thinking about expanding.
She said that when illness prevents you from working, your whole life changes. I want people to know that everyone has some gift, talent that can be used. They can do many things.
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