The Instructors Series :: Flóra Carlile-Kovács

(Note: Our August 2020 Symposium was cancelled due to COVID-19. Flóra was to have been an instructor.)

Award winning felt artist, Flóra Carlile-Kovács was born in Szeged, Hungary and now lives in Seattle WA where she practices her craft and makes beautiful one-of-a-kind felt clothing and accessories.

How she started

Flóra began working with textiles and fibre from an early age and remembers teaching herself to knit, sew, bead and make lace. Her love of fibre arts led her to study ethnography and museology where she realized she’d always felt a deeper passion for creating with fibre rather than analyzing it.

Over the years, Flóra has experimented with many types of traditional fibre arts—embroidery, knitting, weaving, sewing and basket-making, but these days she felts, and incorporates the knowledge and skills learned from those traditional fibre techniques.

What she likes about the form

Flóra thinks of felting as painting and sculpting combined. She feels the use of colour and the different qualities and applications of textures, and forms allow for a fascinating array of creative possibilities. She loves that it keeps both her mind and hands busy. Says Flóra: “I am most attracted to felting because it is a limitless medium.”

Over the past 14 years, Flóra has worked to improve traditional felting techniques while inventing new ones. Her main creative focus is to make her award-winning wearable art and share her craft with her students.

Her Work:

Flóra’s art has been exhibited in Hungary, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic. Her wearable art currently shows in Prague’s Iparos Gallery and in the Earthenworks galleries in Port Townsend and La Conner WA. Her work has been featured in magazines and on Hungarian television. She is a popular instructor who teaches regularly.

Flóra’s Felting Tours

Flóra leads 12-day felt tours where fibre lovers take five days of project-based wet-felting classes from internationally recognized felt artists known for their innovation and artistry. It’s a complete cultural immersion. Participants experience the rarely explored “real Hungary.” The tour is perfectly balanced with workshops and sightseeing.

Tours include visits to craft markets, thermal baths, private trunk shows and other seasonal programs. Participants enjoy some delicious Hungarian food as well.

Flóra’s tours have been described in Fibre Art Now and Felt Matters. This year’s tours take place in April and September. To learn more about the tours visit: https://www.felttours.com