Sharon Wells

Sharon Wells is a feltmaker with more than 20 years' experience, working with wool, silk and other natural fibres to produce unique felted pictures, wildflower and Irish bogland sculptures, and other wool-based products. She adds detail with needle felting, hand embroidery and machine embroidery. Through working with wool fibre, she learnt to wash, card, dye, spin and weave on peg looms.

She has participated in a number of group exhibitions and has had her work featured on RTÉ's Nationwide. She is a member of Feltmakers Ireland, the Weavers, Spinners and Dyers Guild, the Wicklow Craft Foundation and the Irish Grown Wool Council, for whom she has demonstrated at the National Ploughing Championships and Bloom festivals. In April 2025, she presented a talk on wool and its role in healing at the EWE European Wool Exchange Foundation conference.

A TAP (Teacher Artist Partnership) trained artist in residence, Sharon brings feltmaking and other crafts to primary schools. She has participated in the National Arts in Education I Am Creative programme with St Catherine's Special School in Newcastle, Co. Wicklow, and also teaches secondary schools, homeschool groups, libraries, social prescribing groups, neurodivergent and special needs groups, and private classes.

While primarily focused on feltmaking, she also teaches wool processing and dyeing, hand and machine embroidery, coiled basket making, weaving, decoupage, eco-printing and artefact illustration. She sources, washes and dyes wool directly from Irish farms and also uses wool and fibre from family and donated sources.

Sharon holds an MA in Archaeology, focusing on archaeological illustrations from 18th-century Ireland. She has worked as an archaeological illustrator and as a project manager in online training.