At Casa de Arboles Fine Fiber Farm in Monroe, alpaca farmer Maggie DiUlio and her husband Jim Klaassen have embraced a concept known as "Farm to FashionGÇ¥ by creating clothing, yarn, scarves, hats and other household items made from natural alpaca fibers collected at their farm.
Considered by natural fiber aficionados to be a "greenGÇ¥ fiber, alpaca fleece is roughly three to five times warmer than sheep's wool, hypo-allergenic, lanolin-free and far less itchy than other natural fibers. Known as a luxury fiber, alpaca fleece is odor-resistant, flame resistant, naturally windproof and waterproof and has a low capacity for static electricity.
Alpacas, which come in 22 different identified colors ranging from white to black, are not harmed during the sheering
process, which is humane and completely painless.
DiUlio and Klaassen have owned and operated Casa de Arboles for 11 years. Klaassen, a veterinary pathologist, helps care for DiUlio's alpacas, providing dental care, vaccinations, toenail trimmings and weight evaluations. He also serves as the head sheerer during the farm's once-yearly sheering season.
DiUlio, who grew up on a farm in eastern Oregon, always knew that one day she would return to farming. While her experiences growing up on a farm had been infinitely positive, she did have some strict criteria about how she would operate her own farm: she would not raise chickens, she did not want sheep, and she would never again milk another animal.
After becoming increasingly passionate about wool-crafts, she tasked herself with deciding upon a wool-bearing animal that wasn't a sheep.
She was in the midst of contemplating goats when she discovered alpacas.
"It was obvious that needed to be the fiber of choice,GÇ¥ DiUlio said. "Those needed to be my animals for the wool-crafting business because they're very smart and sweet and easy to care for.GÇ¥
She formalized her plan, established a timeline and began working towards her goal.
"That became my plan GÇô my long range plan,GÇ¥ DiUlio said. "When I got my kids out of high school, I was going to move back to eastern Oregon, buy 10 or 12 acres, build a little log cabin, have a few head of alpacas and I was going to start this wool-craft business based on felted alpaca.GÇ¥
She took a new job in Portland, intending to work there for 18 months before pursuing her dream of purchasing acreage in eastern Oregon. And then, in 1996, she met Jim, the man who would eventually become her husband. Jim asked her to move to southern California and marry him GÇô which was quite a drastic deviation from her original plan.
"He's pretty convincing and pretty cute,GÇ¥ DiUlio said. "He said, "If you move to southern California to be with me, we'll get back to the Pacific Northwest as soon as we can and we'll start that alpaca business.'GÇ¥
He sweetened the deal by reminding her that he was a veterinarian, a skill that would come in extremely handy once the
farm was underway. So the two moved to southern California for six years, until 2004, when Jim was offered a position in Everett. He started scouting properties, eventually discovering the 28-acre Monroe property now known as Casa de Arboles.
The property includes a custom-built 5,000 square foot log home, 14 pastures spread out over 28 acres, a mother-in-law cabin, outbuildings, trout pond and a panoramic view of the north Cascade Mountains.
Alpacas, DiUlio explained, have turned out to be the perfect choice. Typically sweet-natured animals, they are very compatible with small acreage. They're light-weight, they eat very little and they have a soft, padded foot, which eases the amount of wear and tear on the pasture.
"They're relatively small and gentle so they're not at all threatening,GÇ¥ DiUlio said. "And once a year you get to sheer them and make something wonderful from their fleece.GÇ¥
Working with other natural fiber advocates, including Longneckers Alpaca Ranch owner Marlene Presser and marketing expert Karmel Ackerman, DiUlio has enjoyed discovering new and innovative ways to work with alpaca fiber. Working collaboratively, the three of them formed a natural fiber consortium called Fibers of the World.
"The three of us pulled together in a partnership we call "Fibers of the World,'GÇ¥ DiUlio said. "Right now we're doing alpaca but we're looking to branch out into other natural fibers like bamboo and silk. I use quite a bit of silk already.GÇ¥
The alpaca fiber can be spun into yarn, which can then be used to create sweaters, scarves and hats. Additional items can be made through wool-crafting processes like needle-felting and wet-felting, which allow DiUlio to transform the alpaca fiber into fabric, creating things like rugs, clothing, table cloths, curtains and sleeping bags. It was through her experimentation with different felting techniques that DiUlio was able to discover a variation of nuno felting, which has since become her signature process.
She was looking for ways to make the felt fabric thinner, while maintaining a high degree of structural integrity.
"By its nature it's kind of a fragile fabric,GÇ¥ DiUlio said. "It wants to tear easily or pull apart easily, and so if you're just using raw felt, you end up having to make the fabric quite thick in order for it to be strong enough to sew into a garment.GÇ¥
And so to create many of her wearable products, DiUlio uses a process called nuno felting, by which the alpaca fiber is bonded with silk. The result is a thinner, lighter-weight felt material that drapes nicely, but is warm and durable. The alpaca fibers end up infused with the silk fibers, creating a sturdy material that is much more comfortable to wear.
"I use a lot of silk chiffon because it adds almost nothing to the weight of the fabric, but it's still very strong and it's a natural fiber,GÇ¥ DiUlio said.
While she loved the soft, draping nature of the nuno-felted silk fabric, there was one drawback: the reverse side of the fabric ended up looked distressed and not very attractive. She could felt to both sides of the silk, which improved the fabric's aesthetic appearance, but the double-felting process defeated the purpose of using silk to create a flowy, light fabric.
"I was trying to brainstorm ways that we could make the inside of the fabric more attractive without double-felting it,GÇ¥ DiUlio said. "So I started experimenting with a velvet cutout.GÇ¥
DiUlio felted alpaca fiber to a white silk chiffon decorated with what is referred to as a velvet burnout. She figured that if she felted the alpaca to the reverse side of the burnout fabric, the velvet pattern would make for a more attractive finish to the inside of the garment. Her sample piece ended up immersed in lavender-colored dye pot, and the result was remarkable: the alpaca fiber took up more of the color than the velvet design, resulting in a softly variegated color-scheme that was quite attractive.
Ironically, what was meant to be the inside of the fabric was too lovely to remain hidden, and so the inside became the outside.
"It became very obvious very quick that this was not the inside of the fabric, which was what I anticipated using it for,GÇ¥ DiUlio said. "This was not the lining of the fabric. It was the outside of the fabric.GÇ¥
DiUlio has continued use and evolve the technique.
"So we do garments now with this style of fabric and we can hand dye it any color,GÇ¥ DiUlio said.
Fibers of the World advocates for zero waste and sustainability, while creating custom products that are hand-crafted and locally made. In addition to Fibers of the World, DiUlio, Presser and Ackerman also established Fibershed of the Greater Northwest, a subset of Fibers of the World meant to gather and assimilate data relevant to the different fleece farmers within the Fibershed.
Casa de Arboles is currently for sale. For more information about the farm, please visit: http://www.casadearboles.com/default.aspx. For more information on Fibers of the World, please visit: http://fibersoftheworld.com/ or the Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fibers-of-the-World/818565388215327?fref=ts.
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