Public Online Masterclass: Embroidery with Richard McVetis, with special guest Celia Pym

Public Events

For this online masterclass Richard McVetis has drawn on his love of stitching, paying attention to time and labour, while exploring the process in conversation with with fellow artist Celia Pym.

During the workshop, Richard will teach different traditional hand embroidery techniques, how you do them and why you do them, in this online gathering of up to 100 people. During the session, Richard and Celia will talk about their maker practices, and together discuss the versatility and strengths of stitching for drawing and mark-making, and the pleasure in having time to make. The session will focus on the following stitches: running stitch; whipped and laced stitch; and couching.

The masterclass will accommodate up to 100 participants, as we try a new format to open up our making workshops to as many people as possible!

What you will for the workshop:

A piece of fabric to stitch on - wool, cotton or linen, nothing too tightly woven
Scissors
Sewing needles
A range of sewing threads (doesn’t need to be hand embroidery specific)
An embroidery hoop (if you don’t have a hoop, you can use a small wooden picture frame and pins instead. Take out the glass out of the wooden frame and pin the fabric to its back)

Richard McVetis is a British artist, known for his meticulously embroidered drawings and sculptures. His artistic practice centres on his training as an embroiderer through the use of traditional hand stitch techniques and mark making. Using laboured and meticulously worked wools and multiples of embroidered dots and crosses, he explores the similarities between pen on paper and thread on fabric, employing a limited vocabulary of mark making and deliberately subdued colour to create a binary simplicity.

Celia Pym is an artist living and working in London, her work has been included in exhibitions such as the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize, V&A Museum and 21_21, Tokyo and she lectures in Knitted and Mixed Media textiles at the Royal College of Art. Celia has been exploring the process of mending since 2007 with extensive experience of small everyday holes, at heels, elbows, in pockets, as well as working on more dramatic damage, caused by water, animals nesting and moths. Celia’s interests are around the evidence of damage – through repair you look closely at where garments and cloth have got worn down and thin. In clothing this wearing is often to do with use and how the body moves.

Pictures courtesy of Richard McVetis.