wishi washi studio: Shakerag Workshops in June!

from a sample swatch book: maps

This summer I am hitting the road and will be teaching a one-week workshop, The Stitcherly Book, at Shakerag in Tennessee.I am very excited to visit this part of the country and teach this class. As many of you know, I love to tell stories with my books, objects and installations and Shakerag Hollow has a rich one:

Shakerag Hollow is named for an old Sewanee custom whereby residents could procure moonshine before the advent of liquor stores. A customer wanting moonshine would come to the bluff at Beckweth Point, near what is now the fourth hole of the Sewanee golf course, shake a rag at the moonshiner who lived down in the hollow, and leave money for a purchase in a tree stump. Then, as the song about Uncle Bill puts it, "you go 'round the bend, and when you come back, then, there's a jug full o' good ole mountain dew." When he returned, the customer would find a jar of moonshine left in the stump, and the money removed

I want to share a little bit of what I will be teaching there this summer. Those of you who follow Wishi Washi Studio may have seen images of work done by my students in the Stitched Photo Collage workshops (see here and here ). Well, The Stitcherly Book will be a five day version of that but students will have a chance to fully develop their work and make their pieces into a book or series of books.

my teaching sample from a recent workshop

We will explore the use of fabric, thread, hand-stitching, embroidery, found papers, images, photographs and even small found objects in book form.

flocked wallpaper, vintage linen and embroidery

Students will be encouraged to bring their collections of fabric, old book pages, found items, photographs, threads, etc. to experiment with in class.

sample piece with book page, wire and thread

I will teach students at least three book structures so that they can start creating their richly designed pages with the end product of a book in mind.