Welcome to Blue Butterfly Originals

Home of the Skipper™ Loom

Blue Butterfly Originals is excited to have this opportunity to show-case and present for your consideration our contributions to the world of wool.

As the fiber artist at Blue Butterfly Originals, I find wool to be a fascinating subject. No one will ever be able to do it all in the world of wool. It simply can't be done!

Knitting, crocheting, weaving, dry and wet felting, re-pro clothing make-overs, spinning, dyeing, rug hooking and braiding, -have I left anything out? All of these facets of wool working can and are, of course, combined and re-combined to produce an infinite variety of wool products.

As a fiber artist, what do I like the best about working with wool? I can only reply: Everything! I love the color, the texture, the smell, the versatility and workability of wool. At any rate, fiber is an absorbing interest. Not since showing Pugs and gardening, have I found such a fascinating subject.

However, since as already noted, no one can do it all with wool, one of Blue Butterfly Originals’ “niche specialties” are hand looms, the Blue Butterfly Originals Skipper™. Miniature weaving looms, (there are always those who want to do things in miniature) and the small hand-looms, so popular from the 1930's into the early 1970's, are happily making a come-back in the craft world. Versatile and portable, projects can range in size and complexity from a single woven square for a mug rug, to several hundred connected squares for a bed-spread.

All types of yarn can be used to weave the squares. However, using wool yarn allows fiber artists to combine two interests in the world of wool: weaving and felting. Warping the wool yarn on the Skipper™ loom ensures that the woven squares will keep their shape, whether hand or machine felted. Hand-looms are thus a tool for felting. The woven squares are building blocks that can be combined into a variety of patterns for a variety of projects: afghans, pillows, scarves, and table-runners, to name a few.

All Blue Butterfly Originals Skipper™ looms are hand-crafted here in Indiana using the native American woods: cherry and walnut. We are proud of our looms, as they offer another medium for working with wool, and, oh dear! Here we go again! A new bucket list of projects requiring the continued, seemingly endless collection of yarn bought at Fiber Festivals, and fiber shops that dangle beautiful yarns before our be-dazzled eyes! Hang the cost! Max the credit card!

Well, anyway, it is a fascinating interest, not to mention productive, too.

Feel free to e-mail, call, or write us, I'm still an old fashioned sort of person and believe that not everything has to be done by the computer. I would love to hear from you!

Take care and Happy Weaving!

Pat and Alan Hokenson

Blue Butterfly Originals

Makers of the Skipper™ loom

Pat Hokenson,  Fiber Artist

Muncie, Indiana

Hand-woven squares

before felting

Handmade 6"x6" cherry

Skipper™ pin loom