Quilting Curves and Waves

January 9th and 23rd , February 2nd

In this workshop, participants will learn a foundational skill for quilting without rulers: piecing curves and waves. Embracing an improvisational style, we will let go of expectations and see where the curves lead us. Machine piecing and hand quilting will be covered. Participants will piece a small wall hanging or pillow face. 

The workshop will be taught by Sylvie Rosenkalt, who has been quilting since childhood. She is an educator, disability cultural activist, and lifelong maker. Her quilting practice embraces odd shapes and asymmetry, allowing the improvisational process to guide the final product. Sylvie machine-pieces and hand-quilts, highlighting irregular beauty with her stitching. She finds joy in embracing improvisation as a quilter, trumpeter and dancer. 

Winter/Spring 2027

New Days! Alternating Tuesday 6:00 to 9:00pm, January 11th- March 16th

See all the dates below

This Fibers Cohort will be led by Sam Fields, the cohort is designed for artists/crafts people interested in incorporating textile-based processes into their practice and or developing the skills they already have. Demonstrations, artist presentations, and critique will be structured around the needs and interests of each participant. Over the course of three months  we will create a space of communal learning and sharing with the goal of deepening skills, concepts, and community. Participants will have access to frame looms, backstrap looms, a shared table loom, knitting machines, sewing machines and sergers, hot and cold water dye equipment, wet and dry felting equipment, hand equipment for knitting, crocheting, and embroidery along with some supplies. The studio will be open for studio time from 6-9pm on the Tuesdays we are not meeting. We are limited to a cohort of six participants.

Dates: January 11th, 25th, February 2nd, 16th, March 2nd, 16th

Sam has been teaching fiber/sculpture-based practices for 20 years in multiple institutions, She is a practicing artist in Hyde Park. Sam is drawn to the materials and processes that have historically lived outside of an “Art” context, she strives to make work that can live in and speak to the different worlds of 'high' and 'low.' “I make--slowly--with/through craft.  Making slowly is a personal act of resistance against the fast-paced, multi-tasking, product-driven world in which I find myself.” As a multimedia artist, Sam engages with textiles and craft-based processes as a survival mechanism, aesthetic, and a conceptual strategy.  Through these modes of making, she is able to explore different social constructs associated with the decorative:  gender, class, professional/hobbyist, and the hierarchical categories of taste and morality. Sam received her MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and her undergraduate degree from Massachusetts College of Art; and is currently Lecturer of Sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts | Tufts University.

If you had to travel far from home tomorrow and could only take what fit in your pocket what would you choose? What textures, shapes, colors, make you feel safe and remind you of home? Drawing upon traditions of Jewish diasporic amulet-making for protection, safe travel, good luck, and good health we will use fabric, beads, embroidery and other embellishment techniques to create charms for this moment. 

Bio

Charlie Dov Schön is an interdisciplinary artist creating contemporary ritual objects across textile and sculpture. Her work has been shown widely at venues including Tufts University Art Galleries (Boston, MA), Brandeis University’s Kniznick Gallery (Waltham, MA), The Wellin Museum of Art (Clinton, NY), and as a part of New York Textile Month (NYC). She has received residencies from Arrowmont School of Craft (TN), Flathead Lake Biological Station (MT), and Art Farm Nebraska. She is currently mounting a workshop series at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in conversation with their exhibition, The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt. Her work was shown in the inaugural launch of the Judeofuturism Project at the Boston Center for the Arts.