Walking into Nancy Ballesteros's studio and wool shop, the eye is met with swathes of hand-dyed silk fabrics and Merino wool tops in vivid, earthy tones.
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, Ms Ballesteros grew up in an outdoors lifestyle, travelling, camping and hiking, but she also enjoyed sewing, painting and other crafts, inspired by the natural grandeur of the United States.
In 1987, three years before moving to Australia with her husband, Mark, she began her own spinning business, Treetops Colour Harmonies, which is now located in her Floreat home.
It was while Ms Ballesteros was studying veterinary medicine when a friend suggested they attend a spinning class, and it was here where she fell in love with all things fibre-related.
While studying, she started working for a small yarn maker, where spinning completely took over her study breaks - and spare time.
It's not just the creative side of fibre art that interests Ms Ballesteros, it's also the science behind it all.
Hand-dyeing a portion of her supply, she has developed her own recipes to not only get the perfect colour, but to be able to repeat that colour every time.
The process takes between two to three hours per kilo of wool.
Creating the perfect dye recipe can be a long and tedious process, having to be repeated and changed often more than 10 times before the colour is exactly what Ms Ballesteros envisioned.
"I've always taken my colour very seriously," she said.
The inspiration for the colour schemes often comes from landscapes, so when Ms Ballesteros moved to Perth in 1990, a whole new world of landscapes were offered.
"Everything is completely different here, you definitely learn to appreciate the subtleties of the Australian landscape, and learn to love it."
The names of her colour schemes usually revolve around uniquely Australian, or Western Australian themes, like 'Banded iron', 'Kimberley blue', or 'Mulla Mulla'.
She hand-dyes the majority of her wool tops in a dye room at her studio, while the rest of it, in commercial quantities, is sent off to Geelong, Victoria, to be dyed in solid colours.
Ms Ballesteros said she was worried about introducing her Merino yarn business to Western Australia, however when she arrived it was a completely different story.
"I just thought, "Oh my god, I'm going to be out of business, I'm moving to the land of the Merino, there's going to be hundreds of competing businesses, I'm just a small thing," she said.
"But then I found no one was doing what I was doing."
The isolation that came with living in WA allowed Ms Ballesteros to lean into her creativity.
"I just had to rely on myself and put my head down and get on with it, and I really value that."I'm not worried about what anyone else is doing."
Remaining as a small business, Ms Ballesteros said she has found it difficult to source wool in small quantities, one 350 kilogram super-pressed bale at a time.
"Australia talks in tonnage and container loads.
"I was lucky to find anybody that would sell to me."
Acutely aware of the time and effort required to clean and process Merino fleece, Ms Ballesteros opted for wool tops due to the size of her business.
After a few bad years for Australian wool within a 15-year period, she even sought to buy wool from New Zealand, and now will either source from there or Australia.
"It was just a matter of whoever would sell it (tops) in the quantity that I needed at the price that I could manage," she said.
"For me to buy just one bale, it was a miracle.
"It's been a really hard thing to source wool, which is crazy.
"But understandable, if you really understand how big of a volume they deal with here, and that we don't have the processing facilities.
"If I wanted to buy a few bales of farm wool, I'm sure I could, but it's not what I need."
Ms Ballesteros's creative practice developed to include a technique known as Nuno felting, which is where fabric and wool are combined.
The wool fibres migrate and entangle through the fabric weave structure.
This entangled mass is then agitated until it shrinks into what is referred to as Nuno felt.
Using fabric in combination with wool for felting offers a lustre and drape that wool alone doesn't offer.
This was a lightbulb moment for Ms Ballesteros, who now also sells a silk fabric from a mill in China, exclusively woven for and sold to Treetops Colour Harmonies.
Treetops Colour Harmonies has clients from all across the world, and sells about two thirds of its products internationally.
The rest is evenly distributed between WA and the Eastern States.
Ms Ballesteros's clients have taken her wool as far and wide as the catwalks of Paris.
She said it was a privilege to watch her materials be used in so many different ways.
"I have seen thousands of people being creative with the same thing that I have been creative with, and I see thousands of outcomes, and it's such a privilege, it's so exciting," Ms Ballesteros said.
Between running her business and creating her own artworks, she occasionally finds time to teach classes.
"I never dreamt 35 years ago that I would be able to do it for 35 years," Ms Ballesteros said.
"I look back and it's just been one foot in front of the other."
Perri Polson
Perri is an agriculture journalist with Farm Weekly. Born in regional Victoria, Perri developed a love of regional and rural news at a young age, and is now passionate about advocating for the agricultural industry. Her interests include science, agronomy, livestock and food production.
Perri is an agriculture journalist with Farm Weekly. Born in regional Victoria, Perri developed a love of regional and rural news at a young age, and is now passionate about advocating for the agricultural industry. Her interests include science, agronomy, livestock and food production.
