Taught by:

Offered:

Monday, May 4

Experience level: all levels welcome

This playful mixed-media workshop (specifically created to support your work in Crumb Quilt Coat and The Intuitive Stitch) will have us messing about with a wide range of ephemera and an old fairy tale: The Six Swans.

Why The Six Swans? Well, if you are not familiar with this story, our heroine models steadiness of purpose through a most wretched ordeal where she stitches—steady on—with focus and intention. Her perseverance results in overcoming the challenge and saving the lives of her beloved brothers. As with all good fairy tales, the wisdom and encouragement in how to deal with daily life is woven through the story and this one in particular seems to have some helpful bits for navigating today’s stormy world.

Six Swans is a fabulous story for many reasons, not least of which is because the valiant princess saves her six brothers through the act of hand-stitching six shirts from aster flowers— resourceful makers for the win—but also because of the extraordinary life challenges she must overcome in order to break the curse. She is fully rooted in her heart to complete this extraordinary feat which demands focus, commitment, dedication, unwavering faith over the course of many long years where she cannot speak or laugh and is treated brutally.

Dang—these fairy tales, they really lay it on heavy—I’m telling ya’

But the happy ending is— ta dah! She DOES it. She does not give up in the face of everything thrown at her and quite possibly, her steady stitching contributes in part to how she makes it through.

Using this fairy tale as our jumping off place, we will unearth both the collective and personal mythic archetypes and elements that the story presents and see how they are showing up (or are absent) in our daily life. As we play with the elements of this old myth—using mixed media —each of us will explore what happens when we lose our voice (in small and large ways) and the extraordinary surge of power that informs our daily life, our making and how we show up in the world— when we do the hard work to reclaim it.

Kit fee: 0

Materials:

All materials (including a pdf of the fairy tale) will be provided.

Please bring a journal and pen.

optional: any favorite bits of ephemera, fabrics, sewing notions, preferred pen, etc