FARMINGTON – Nancy Dionne has a passion for fiber, of the textile variety.

As a child of four or five, she would sit and think about the patterns, colors and textures of her dresses, the things in her house. It wasn’t about the things so much as the beauty of the natural materials that went into them.

Now, at 58, Dionne is still fascinated by fiber, and as she explores new ways to work with it, she is also adding to the wares sold at Aardvark Outfitters, a local store that caters not to artists, but to rugged adventurers.

If you walk into the store this holiday season, you’ll find the usual fleece clothing, ski supplies, kayaks, snowshoes, camping gear and sleds.

But in a corner at the front of the store, you’ll also be confronted with the jewel-toned products of Dionne’s rather incredible experiments.

Snowy, textured pillows on one wall don’t look a thing like the capes and scarves Dionne made them from. Sugarloaf-shaped pillows complete with a dusting of felted snow – a new idea for Dionne – are getting more popular every day. Orders for sweaters and hats are coming in almost daily, and the stock of hats and scarves are going like hot cakes.

Dionne never planned it this way, she said. Aardvark co-owner and her husband, Bob, suggested it. “I’d been bugging her,” he said. “She’d make something at home and I’d say jeez, you should bring it into the store.”

Now stocked in the front corner, everything’s doing really well, he said. But it comes naturally to someone like his wife, Bob said.

Nancy Dionne’s newest experiment – needle felting colorful abstract designs and wintry scenes onto woolen pillows – came out of looking for something to do with old wool scraps cluttering her sewing room.

“I’ve always sewn,” she said. “I started knitting when I was 10, sewing as well. I made my own clothing, knit sweaters, made doll clothes.” Growing up in Weld, she was taught by her mother.

In the 1960s, Nancy experimented with spinning her own yarn and dying it with natural dyes made of madder root, onion skin and black walnut shells. Bob was also spinning at that time, she said.

He was working as a hand weaver, spinning and weaving high-end scarves and shawls for outfits like Lord & Taylor. “We’d sit around at night with the spinning wheels and spin away,” he said.

“If we had lived in a non-rural environment, I’m sure she would have been a costume designer,” Bob said. Nancy used to make him incredible Halloween costumes, he said. It was a tradition. “I was Big Bird once,” he said. “There are some people in this community who still know me as Big Bird.”

Living with someone as artistic as Nancy and seeing the results of her creativity take off in his store has been great fun, he said. “You have to understand, I see it being made at home, and I’m part of the adventure,” he said. “I’ve watched her all of her working life and I’ve wondered ‘why isn’t she doing something artistic all the time?’ I would say it’s much more her calling than any of the other things she’s done.”

Nancy gets up early to sew, knit and felt in addition to working at the store. With so many years of experience under her belt, she can work easily now without a pattern, designing as she goes. It’s great fun, she said, to just create, without plans. And, perhaps, she’s just getting started.

“I’m still very much a beginner,” she said. “(Aardvark)’s always been just sporting goods. This is very much evolving. I’m letting things just happen.”

Sitting at table in Aardvark’s upstairs room Friday, she used a needle to apply wine-colored fleece to a white pillow, in the shape of a menorah, to go in a basket of small scented pillows with Christmas and Hanukkah themes in her downstairs display.

She doesn’t know what comes next – if she stays with the pillows, or continues making felted bath soaps (the felt shrinks with the soap), or what. For now, she’ll wait and see.

“But it’s become a passion,” she said. “I’m loving it.”