Our homes are our vessels. Places to find comfort, cook nourishing meals, curl up in cozy corners, and snuggle into our beds. We share these spaces with those we love and our furry friends, and fill them with the memories we make. Surrounding ourselves with items we cherish, things that bring us joy, and objects we hold dear help us come home to ourselves. Our homes are our hearts. We invite you to spend three wonderfully creative days interpreting the special places and pieces in your home, or perhaps an imaginary abode of your dreams, through sketching and painting and stitching. It might be your favorite chair or cozy nook; a corner where the light shines just so; a beloved plant or that coffee mug that fits perfectly in your palm; the vase you always reach for when you bring home a handful of fresh flowers; or even a vessel that collects all the little things. 

Each of our three days together will feature different creative mediums. We’ll take a playful drawing and painting journey in celebration of the treasures and favorite corners in our homes; create a darling squeeze pouch vessel to hold coins or little office supplies; and learn special embroidery stitches for creating your own version of Adriana’s magical sweater chair.  Join sensational artists and educators from around the world, Flora Waycott, Arounna Khounnoraj, and Adriana Torres, for a very special experience that will inspire you to interpret your home through your hands. 

A carefully curated Care Kit will be mailed to you with meticulously curated materials for this workshop experience, and a list of materials you’ll be asked to bring will be provided. This experience will be recorded and you will have unlimited access to the recordings for one month following the event. Five reduced fee tickets will be offered, based on financial need using the honor system. These tickets, two for international and three for U.S. participants, are anonymous and first come first serve via our registration system. We can’t wait to gather together, from the comforts of our homes, to nourish the creativity found in all of us.

DAY 1

PAINTING cozy corners with FLORA WAYCOTT

Paintings inspired by home are a perfect way to start a daily art practice or to refine your skills, incorporating feelings of coziness and warmth. Flora will begin with an introduction to gouache; a creamy, versatile and vibrant paint. Working with a carefully chosen limited palette, we will mix the paints to create a color chart for reference, before delving into painting techniques and creating a duo of greeting cards. A subject matter which is a continual exploration in Flora’s art practice is cozy home interiors and room scenes. She will demonstrate her approach, from finding inspiration to final painting and we will follow the steps to create a cozy scene to treasure. No matter what your skill level, this is a gentle introduction to painting with an emphasis on play, seeking new inspiration and delight in the process.

YOU WILL LEARN:

• An introduction to gouache paints.

• Using a limited color palette and color mixing.

• Painting techniques including textures and adding details.

• Painting simple objects.

• How to approach an interior scene for a painting.

• A step-by-step guide to painting an interior scene.

DAY 2

patchwork squeeze pouch WITH AROUNNA Khounnoraj

In this workshop you will explore color and composition, and create a small vessel to hold everything from the change in your pockets to a collection of buttons to the special small trinkets found around your home. Improv patchwork is a method of sewing fabric remnants together that are based on the size and shapes of the fabric that you have on hand rather than based on a pattern. Arounna will demonstrate a few of her favorite construction methods, which will help guide you in designing a color story and creating your own improv patchworks. After you have your patchwork pieces sewn, she will demonstrate how to hand sew the pieces together to create a special squeeze pouch vessel to hold your small dearest household items.

YOU WILL LEARN:

• hand sewing techniques that include a quilter’s knot and finishing knot

• running and back stitch

• how to compose a composition and create a color story

• how to sew and construct a small squeeze pouch

• how to install a squeeze frame

DAY 3

EMBROIDERING A SWEATER CHAIR with ADRIANA TORRES

During this very special session, you will have the first-of-its-kind opportunity to embroider your own version of Adriana’s iconic sweater chair inspired by the chairs and objects you love around your home. This is first time Adriana has invited students to interpret this renowned design, letting your imagination take you to your favorite chair, or the one in your dreams, and combine it with meaningful everyday elements. You will learn how to transfer an illustration to fabric; learn 9 different stitches, some well known and others rare and unique; and become proficient in  choosing the ideal number of strands for each stitch in the context of a design to obtain the best results. The Care Kit will include a carefully selected color palette by Adriana herself, and with these various stitch combinations, you will be guided to embroider a sweater chair with a house in the middle of a forest. You will leave this workshop with not only a beautiful embroidery, but have the ability and a plethora of ideas to create your own magical versions of a sweater chair. 

Adriana started embroidering chairs with sweaters in 2008, when she made the first drawing combining two everyday objects she liked most. Her fascination for designer chairs reaches back to when she was an architecture student, discovering the Bauhaus and the designs of Marcel Breuer and Gerrit Rietveld. She thinks deeply about the phrase by Gaston Bachelard that says “without the unexpected crossing of two images there is no imagination.” For him, imagination is a process of the soul and can only be explained through the images themselves. Beside chairs and hand knitted sweaters, Adriana has always loved the different ~ the unique. The repetition of her sweater chairs shows her passion for the subject, just like the Dutch painter Klaas Gubbels repeatedly painting coffee pots and the Icelandic painter Storval painting mountains. Adriana is sure she will paint and stitch chairs with sweaters for the rest of her life.

YOU WILL LEARN:

• how to make a perfect tiny stem stitch

• how to improve bullion, french knots, blanket, satin and fly stitches

• discover crow's foot and burden stitches

• how to mix all these stitches to create a tiny forest in a sweater on a chair

• to use your imagination to dream up your own sweater chair