Meet Your Maker: Yulia Ivashchenko of Koshka Creations
Most people pick up a creative hobby, and it stays a hobby. Yulia Ivashchenko picked up wet felting and it rearranged her whole life, which is saying something, because her life was already pretty interesting.
Before she ever touched a sheet of merino wool, Yulia was a marine scientist with a doctorate, spending her career studying whales. Not metaphorical ones. Actual, ocean-dwelling whales. She's Russian-Ukrainian by birth, art school-trained in watercolor and technical drawing, and spent years doing research that made international headlines.
Then she moved to Vashon Island in 2017, and everything shifted.
From Whale Science to Wool and Silk
When Yulia arrived on Vashon, she started working with Dorothy Duncliffe at Dova Silks, the island's beloved wearable art studio. She learned dressmaking, got her hands on silk, and began to understand fabric in a completely different way than she had before.
And then she found felting.
Wet felting is one of the oldest textile techniques in the world. You take loose wool, add water and soap, and through friction and pressure, the fibers lock together into fabric. No loom, no needles, no machine. Just your hands and the wool doing what wool does.
For someone trained in both science and art, it made perfect sense. There's a precision to the process, a chemistry to how the fibers bond, and then there's the part where you let go and see what happens. Yulia took to it immediately.
Now she creates hats, scarves, shirts, pillows, and wearable art under her studio name Koshka Creations. She works primarily with merino wool and silk, and her designs pull from nature, the Pacific Northwest landscape, and the kind of whimsy that comes from someone who's lived in enough places to see the world with fresh eyes. Every piece is one of a kind.
The Workshop: Nuno Felting a Scarf
Nuno felting is a specific technique where wool fibers are worked into a sheer base fabric (usually silk) to create something lightweight and drapey, unlike the thick, dense felt most people picture. The result is a scarf you'd actually want to wear in any season, including summer.
In this workshop, Yulia will walk you through the full process. You'll work with merino wool, rayon fibers, and silk fabrics to design and felt your own head or neck scarf. She'll explain how wet felting works, why the fibers bond the way they do, and how to control the process to get the look you want.
The materials are simple: your hands, water, soap, a spray bottle, a towel, and some plastic. The rest comes from your imagination.
You'll leave with a finished, wearable scarf that's completely unique to you, plus enough understanding of the technique to try it at home. The tools are cheap, the materials are accessible, and once you know the basics, you can felt just about anything.
No experience needed.
Why This One's Special
There's something deeply satisfying about wet felting. It's physical. You're pressing, rolling, working the fibers with your hands. It's the kind of craft where you can feel the material changing under your palms, and the finished product looks nothing like what you started with.
Yulia brings a scientist's understanding of the process and an artist's eye for color and texture. She knows why the wool does what it does, and she knows how to help you make something beautiful with it, even if you've never heard of felting before today.
Save Your Spot
Mischief & Makers Camp runs August 7 through 9 on Vashon Island. Yulia's Nuno Felting workshop is one of several hands-on sessions over the weekend, alongside chef-prepared meals and the kind of unhurried, screen-free time your overscheduled self has been craving.
Follow Yulia's work on Instagram at @koshkacreations.