About us
Welcome to The Felted Desert
We are an Arizona, USA, family owned company, located in the heart of the Valley in Phoenix, surrounded by the beautiful mountains and cactus filled desert, where the gorgeous sunsets paint the skies with stunning colors of purples, reds, blues, pinks, and yellows creating the most amazing scenery.
The Felted Desert is owned and operated by Sculptural Mixed Media/Felting Artist Tracy Laasch, and her husband Brian. Tracy's sister Toni also works with The Felted Desert, creating some of our signature felting pads from her studio in Austin, TX. Cal Vander Cooi is a woodworking Artist in Scottsdale, AZ who also works with The Felted Desert creating our amazing ART-BLOCK Wet Felting/Fulling Block Boards. Cal also creates beautiful yarn bowls which can be found on his website below. Each of his amazing art pieces are handcrafted in stunning woods and personally signed as collectors items.
We love everything about wool and felting. At The Felted Desert, we carry an extensive range of quality wool, fibers, tools, supplies, kits and tutorials, and hold in person classes in our shop/studio to support your needle felting & wet felting needs. We are here to provide you with the best quality supplies, information and support for all your felting projects. We do not sell anything we would not use ourselves.
Our staff is ready to assist you and answer all of your questions, and to help you choose colors, select the best fibers for the desired project, and help make sure you have all the tools you need when you are ready to begin your first or 100th felting project. If you need assistance at any time, give us a call, or drop us an email through our "contact us" page, and we will be happy to help. And... please email us photos of your finished art projects using our wool, and you might gain a spot on our Featured Artists page!
We love to see what you are up to!
Meet the team
Tracy Laasch
Our professional felting artist in residence. Tracy runs our store, teaches our in studio felting classes, works as a full time artist in two Arizona Art Galleries, and participates in the Hidden in The Hills Studio Tour Art Show in Arizona for two weekends every November, as well as other local art shows in art leagues and galleries throughout the year. Read more about her on our Featured Artist page or check out her website at www.tracylaaschdesigns.com
Brian Laasch
Our computer geek/technical support, and behind the scenes support, security team leader, and all around good guy.
Toni Kehoe Ingram
Toni, Tracy's sister, works from her studio in Austin. She will be designing, and sewing our amazing Wool Wonder Mats, which we will be adding to the store later this summer or early fall. (Be patient- good things take time). They will be worth the wait!
Michele Flatbush
Michele started out as one of our needle felting students who had taken several of our classes, and fell in love with needle felting, then fell in love with The Felted Desert and our "Security Team". Michele is a full time Resource Teacher by Trade working with Special Education students, but helps out at our Shop and Classroom part time, and has become a wonderful friend and asset to the staff at The Felted Desert.
Burney, Annie Oakley, & Tucker (Trouble) Laasch
Burney, Annie Oakley & Tucker are our studio greeters, and head up our moral support department. They are in charge of keeping everyone on task and happy at The Felted Desert. They also work as door security, and delivery package inspectors, and they do a great job! I would say they work cheap, but there's the treats, toys, organic dog food, grooming services, t-shirts, etc... so trust us when we say they are well paid!
You can see they are hard at work on the latest delivery- going through a thorough inspection of each and every box, and finally..... APPROVED! 🐶🐶🐶