Fleece Artist goes back to the 1970s when Jana Dempsey’s mother – described by her daughter as a hippie – wanted to get back to the land, so she took up homesteading on a family property on the eastern shore of Nova Scotia. At the same time, an aunt of Jana’s was into design and textiles at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD). While her parents were homesteading, her mother and aunt started Fleece Artist together, initially as a supply shop for NSCAD fiber artists. But in the mid-90s Dempsey’s mother made an observation.
“She said ‘I always end up with these colours that nobody wants,’” says Dempsey. “’Wouldn’t it be great if the yarn was all white and you only dyed what people want.” So, she changed her business model to custom dyeing.
Dempsey herself rejoined the family business in 2004 and has become the owner since her mother retired. Initially, the business used sheep from the family’s homestead to source wool but soon found that to be challenging – the salt air on the coast had ill effects on the softness of the product and the logistics were complicated. So for many years the business has sourced wool from others.
The majority of Fleece Artist’s wool is kid mohair sourced off-shore. Their customers are found around the world as well – Fleece Artist’s strongest market is in the Maritimes, but they have customers across North America as well as in Australia and Europe. But through the wonders of modern communication, while it is a business with many international facets, the business still has a relatively small capacity in the grand scheme.
“We have between five and eight people who work here and everything is completely manual,” says Dempsey. “I’m dying tiny lots of yarn, like five skeins at a time, enough for one sweater at a time. I was working out the math, and I figure I could dye all the fiber from 5000 sheep a year, and that’s just me. If we were in Yorkshire or parts of New Zealand or Australia, that’s not a big number. But here, that’s a big number.”
Dempsey says she is lucky to work with talented trade artists who help her have the capacity that she does. She attributes this to the Maritimes simply having many craftspeople, perhaps more than any other place in the country in her estimation.
“You just have such a talented pool of people that can do this kind of work,” says Dempsey. “That’s one of the biggest reasons this business is thriving here is the people that contribute to it. You need people with crafting skills with an eye for colour, people who appreciate knitting and weaving as a craft. We have really strong roots here, and I think it’s because historically we need woolen garments for our weather. It’s not a luxury here, it’s a necessity.”
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