Mini Interview with Leslie Yang of Feisty Elle

Today’s Jewelry Artist Mini Interview is with Leslie of Feisty Elle. I’ve known Leslie for a number of years and have always admired her work, but her new stuff just blows me away. It’s unique, hip, strong but still girlie. So without further ado, I bring you the feisty goods of Feisty Elle! (all photos copright Feisty Elle 2009)

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How did you start doing jewelry (or bead making) as a business?
Until recently, Feisty Elle, produced handmade women’s brooches, bobby pins, hair clips, and badges made from felt and cotton fabric. I was obsessed with felting before it became popular, and taught myself both wetfelting and needlefelting. However, I became frustrated over how many womanhours I would put into a single piece and how low I would have to price it be able to sell or move it. Talk about depressing and not profitable! I’ve now begun to phase out of producing handfelted work and begun to introduce more laser-cut industrial wool felt into my work, which finally gets to answering your question! When I first started designing laser-cut accessories, I designed brooches and hairclips, and just for fun, I made a smaller version of a dahlia brooch design to fit onto a bobby pin. A friend of mine saw this small design said she’d love the design instead as earrings. And here I am, designing felt and bamboo earrings!

Do you remember the first piece of jewelry you ever made?
Yeah! You’re taking me back, Barbe! It was in this arts and crafts class in fifth grade where we made paper beads and strung them into long necklaces.

You are stuck on a desert island for a year and can only take 5 things to make jewelry with-what would you take?
One, I need my CS4 design software; I’d feel naked without it. Two, and this is totally cheating, but I’d love to bring a lasercutter with me. Three, that means I’d need some sort of solar-powered generator to run the lasercutter and my laptop. Four, a year’s supply of bamboo ply and felt in every imaginable color. And five, dark chocolate because it’s delicious and keeps me going.

What would you like to work with/or what skill would you like to learn that you haven’t yet?
I would love to work with a 3D printer.

What do you do when you aren’t making jewelry?
I’m most likely either working on the biz side of Feisty Elle, reading design books, reading too many blogs, eating out too often when I should be cooking at home, and scribbling new jewelry design ideas in my sketchbook.

Thanks for the interview Leslie! And if you are in San Francisco, Leslie will be selling her feisty accessories at Renegade Craft Fair Sat & Sun July 18th & 18th at Ft. Mason.

Read These Next

If you’re looking for a fun project to play with brioche knitting, check out the My Buddy knitting pattern/recipe from Casuarinagirl on Ravelry.

This project doesn’t include a brioche tutorial, so it’s good to know the basics, including how to increase and decrease, but you can always practice on a swatch before you start the project if you want.

The design is meant to be flexible for the yarn you have and what size and shape of project you want to make, from a skinny neck scarf to a asymmetrical triangle or a more classic triangular shape.

The shape you end up with will depend on how often you increase (and then decrease on the other side). The pattern mentions increasing every fourth, fifth or six row (and the one shown increases and decreases every sixth row) but you can do it even more or less often depending on the shape you’re looking for an how much yarn you want to use.

You can work to whatever depth you would like, or use almost half of the yarn you have set aside for the project and begin decreasing.

When it comes to yarn, she used three strands of yarn held together to make a super fluffy shawl, but you can work it with whatever yarn and needles you like to make a wrap that’s all your own.

If you are new to brioche (or to increasing and decreasing in brioche) it might be a good idea to make a little scarf or head wrap first before diving in to the bigger pattern, just so you’re more comfortable with the technique. Or just give it a go; nothing about brioche knitting is that difficult. (But you might want to use a lifeline because I find brioche hard to rip out or fix mistakes in properly.)

You can grab the free pattern for the Buddy Wrap on Ravelry.

[Photo: Casuarinagirl]

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