I’ve just enjoyed a free 5-day collage workshop, exploring and blurring boundaries with paint+stitch with Gwen Hedley, an abbreviated version of the first week of her 2-week Stitch Club workshop I took last year. I wasn’t entirely pleased with some of my choices back then, and didn’t get around to repeating it as I meant to, so took this one. This freebie was called Stitch Camp, and had many but not all the good features of a Stitch Club workshop, some of which weren’t possible in such the format.

I can see a nice series, perhaps, and love the colours I chose together, so, yes, I’ve kept the paint and offcuts and though I won’t take this any further just at the moment, I’ll eventually decide how to mount this as one or several pieces – the photo shows the stitching on 4 adjacent pieces, totalling about 20cm x 5cm, but the strip continues to about 60cm length at the moment.

Several thousand stitchers registered for Stitch Camp, I believe, many more than anticipated. It’s purpose was to whet the appetites of stitchers old and new, beginner and advanced, reconnect them to hand stitching, and then offer them the chance to sign up for Stitch Club in the following few days, and it will be interesting to see how many do. Stitch Club registration period is now open, with just 6+ days in which to join. They only open registrations twice a year, so the best chance for someone wanting to be advised of the next registration period is always to sign up for the monthly newsletter for fibre and textile artists at TextileArtist.org

It was immediately obvious to all the original members like myself that the S.C. monthly subscription costs a mere fraction of the hundreds of dollars of workshop fees top textile artist teachers command for an in-person workshop. Add to that the travel and accommodation, and attending a summer school or symposium in UK, Australia or USA from here in Uruguay would require a layout of thousands of dollars. This monthly subscription is obviously really good value when compared to the cost of good quality cotton fabric I use for piecing; in this case ~2-3m fabric/month. Stitch Club is my Pandemic Treat and I’ve just signed up for the third year of workshops.