Set up in the west arcade of the York Quay Gallery, Walter's exhibit is visible as you pass through the hallway connecting the north and south buildings. The line, made entirely of felt, is displayed to show off each piece’s various potential uses in an emergency or outdoors situation. The cape, for example, can be used as a blanket or a tent. The skirt can be unfolded and used as a ground cover. Boots can become sandals. A mask doubles as a breast plate, and a filter can be flipped around and worn as a hat. The patterns for each design are posted next to the window display, to show Walter’s process.

Walter never intended the pieces to be bought by the fashion-conscious, for use on their Algonquin portages. She wanted to portray an irony in her designs, walking the line between art and design by playing with the context of the window display. There are a few pieces for sale in Bounty, the shop at Harbourfront, and Walter will be thrilled if they sell, but she explains that the focus is art. She thinks of her work as “maintaining an art practice with a bit of a critical edge.”

Walter started up her Toronto-based company, Felt Studio, in 2000, with a solid grounding in fine arts. She studied art history at Queen’s University in Kingston, then attended the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, touching on sculpture, painting and installation. She topped it all off with an Masters of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal.

For such a widely-trained artist, why, one may ask, only work in felt? It turns out felt is in her family: she and her brother (who is a felt supplier) are the fourth generation in a family-owned industrial felt business that dates back to 1893.

Now that’s an artist’s commitment to their material. And it shows. The pieces are crafted with an attention to detail that's often missing from ready-to-wear designs. What's more, all of Walter’s designs are made with eco-friendly felt, made from 80% to 100% wool. She works almost exclusively with grey felt, which is the most eco-friendly because of its natural, unbleached, un-dyed fibres and use of recycled thread waste.

“I’ve set up for myself as a kind of problem or parametre to work only with grey and deal more with the texture and structure of felt rather than surface and colour issues,” Walter explains. “It suits my interest in sculpture and is still endless in possibility.” And her commitment to sustainability doesn’t stop there: she works with remnants and off-cuts from previous projects in order to recycle all her materials back into her practice.

With these Shelter pieces, and all of her lines, she uses basic shapes like squares and rectangles to provide maximum yield of her material and limit the waste. Walter also claims that using felt as a material is more efficient than other choices because of its versatility, “It is so sculptural that it is amazing what forms you can fashion from just one piece of it.” It’s also resilient, strong as rope when cut into strips, breathable, warm, water-resistant and flame retardant.

In one sense, Shelter’s line gives new meaning to the idea of ready-to-wear, in that they could, potentially, double as emergency pieces for basic refuge and survival. But they’re meant more as works of art than everyday wear. At once haute couture and survival gear, Walter’s work stands apart from both fashion design and industrial design, mostly because it doesn’t fit neatly into either sphere.

The exhibition is on display through September 21st at the York Quay Gallery, 235 Queen’s Quay. Visit www.harbourfrontcentre.com or www.feltstudio.com for more information. Felt Studio will also be part of a group exhibition curated by Susan Brown at New York’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2009.