Improvisational Stitching

Unleash your inner artist! We begin with a hand dyed piece of linen, loosely woven cotton, or wool and start stitching. We’ll use a wide variety of threads, adding layers of other materials and embellishing with a vast array of stitches with no preconceived ideas, but with lots of support, cheering and hand holding if you want/need it. Composition, elements of design and lots of techniques are explored in this intensive, hands on 5-day class. This is a dive-into-the-deep-end workshop. I promise, you’ll have a blast

This is a 5-day virtual workshop via Zoom that meets every Saturday for 5 consecutive Saturdays. The demos are recorded and sent to each participant once they’ve been uploaded.

Workshop Length: 5 Saturdays


Itinerary

1st Class

The Basics: Some of the basic concepts regarding improvisational stitching, what does it mean, how do I begin, what about color? I will answer all those questions as well as help you pull threads, get those 1st few stitches down, work through fear, and I even have some work arounds if that inner critic shows up. We will discuss color and let the fabric “talk” to us, especially if working with a hand dyed, immersion dyed, ice dyed or painted linen or loosely woven cotton.

2nd Class

This class is all about composition and the elements of design. We begin exploring the ways in which we can change our background fabric through hand dyeing.  If we have time we will begin  hand dyeing t-shirting, cheesecloth and burlap. Whatever we are unable to cover we will cover in more detail in our 3rd class.

3rd Class

We explore layering, adding texture and lots of techniques to do so.  We touch on composition and the elements of design a bit more and how they apply to our piece. Adding silk velvet, dupioni silk, wool roving, silk hankies and at least one large element to our pieces is the focus of Class 3.  There is a lot to cover!

4th Class

Is it flowing together?  What to do if it isn’t.  Getting those disparate parts to play nicely with one another.  Adding beading, stuffing a wool circle, adding other things like bark, objects, rings, found objects, etc.  Each person’s piece will be discussed individually, with lots of cheering on.  This class is the “Keep going!” class and how to do that.

5th Class

Is it finished?  How do I know if it’s done?  What to look for.  What about finishing?  Framing, floating or make it into something else.  Lots of ideas and examples of how to finish your piece so that you come away with something you love.

This workshop has run  in the past. Please sign up to my mailing list to hear about our next run.

Last run of the workshop

April 30th to May 28th
1pm to 4:30pm EST

This is an older workshop

We had an amazing time during this workshop.  If you’d like to sign up to hear about more workshops, please join my mailing list.