Jessica de Haas's vibrant, textural felt wraps and jackets are part avant-garde art, part boho-chic-rooted squarely in contemporary fashion. But the processes she uses to make her Funk Shui line verge on the primitive. As the artist so aptly puts it: "I definitely do things the long way."

Seated in her East Side studio, de Haas is surrounded by the implements of an art form that goes back thousands of years. Dreadlocks of raw, unbleached wool sprout out of bags, and nearby are the old-fashioned carding tools she uses to meticulously comb them into sheets and dye them. Next she has to fuse the wool to silk using a laborious technique of pouring boiling water over them and rolling the new material out into a thin, durable fabric. She then begins sewing and embroidering it into one of her creations. Her painstaking craftmanship runs in stark contrast to the world of mass-produced apparel. And that's just the way de Haas likes it. "It's definitely a tactile process. For me, the joy is in the creation of the piece. Even if I'm following some pattern, every piece will be different," she says, showing the way yellow-green swirls randomly through to blue-green on one wrap.

Soon, Vancouverites will be able to watch firsthand: de Haas is preparing to move into a spot at 1375 Railspur Alley on Granville Island. Opening later this month, Funk Shui Atelier will have a workspace as well as a shop selling her one-of-a-kind looks, including smaller items like hats, scarves, and flower pins. "People are really separated from the creation process of most clothing," she observes. "This opens their eyes and they can appreciate it as an ancient art form being lost."

Textiles have intrigued de Haas for years. In the late '90s, she started studying fibre arts at the Kootenay School of Art. Since then she has studied them around the world, including a stint in Indonesia learning traditional batik dyeing techniques. De Haas comes to felt-making from a visual-arts background, and her pieces display the attention to texture, form, and colour that you might find in a soft sculpture. Yes, they're wearable art, but they have much more of a fashion edge than that term might convey. Jackets curve to fit the body, cinch at the waist with ties, or have ruffly silk edging along their bell sleeves, while wraps come tacked at the sides for a hip kimono/bat-wing effect. And the cutout shapes she fuses right onto the felt and covers in scrolling embroidery are just random enough to look deconstructed. Many of the jackets and wraps are reversible, with a fuzzy wool side turning over to a shimmery silk layer that's become as textured as snakeskin from the fusion process.

The most elaborately stitched pieces aren't cheap, but before we get to prices, de Haas attempts to quantify the time she puts into each design. "To make one piece of yardage takes two hours of physical labour, not including the dyeing and the drying," the designer explains. "From that one piece of yardage I could make three hats, or it would take a couple of pieces of yardage to make a jacket. So for jackets, it takes six to eight hours just to make the fabric. Now I'm doing more and more embroidery and appliqués, so it takes even more time-a couple days. I also do a lot of seaming on them because I like them to be tailored."

Not every item is out of reach; pins start at $25, while hats start at about $90. Wraps will cost you $198, more if there's detailed embroidery, and jackets can run $600 to $800.

People seem to appreciate the work behind de Haas's sculptural creations: these days, she says she can barely keep up with demand. She should have more luck in her Granville Island space, where she'll have an assistant and a new machine that will help with the laborious rolling-out process. There's even enough interest in the art form that she intends to hold felt-making workshops.

"In the last couple years I've seen a lot more of it [felting] worldwide; there's definitely been a resurgence," she says. "It's just such a unique fibre, and a lot of people are being drawn to something more rootsy and one-of-a-kind-something that expresses individuality." In today's rushed world, it appears de Haas isn't the only one attracted to doing things the long way.