Touch and Tell

5 days - Intermediate/Advanced

Rediscover the magic of touch and texture! All objects have their own particular feel, and our lives are often ruled by “Look But Don’t Touch!” here you can touch to your heart’s content as you work with fabrics that are smooth, shiny, rough, bumpy, filmy, or feathery. In this class learn how to make a huge variety of textures with your fabrics as you stitch and pleat, fold, crunch, embroider and embellish with a variety of threads and fabrics of different weights. Emphasis will be on texture, fabric manipulation, machine and hand embroidery and embellishment while students make several small experimental pieces before choosing to make a textured wall quilt.

Taught by: Rosalie Dace

Supplies Needed:

• Sewing machine, cleaned, oiled and in good working order, with manual and knee lift (if your machine has one)
• Appropriate extension cord and multi plug/adaptor etc
• Normal presser feet.

Optional machine accessories: Cording, piping and zipper feet. Extra bobbin case for experimental work

Machine needles: A variety including some of the following: Schmetz universal 80, 60, 90, metallica, embroidery, quilting, microtex and twin needles

Hand sewing needles: Sharp embroidery, tapestry, quilting, beading

Thread: Neutral or matching sewing thread

Optional: Specialist threads. Choose from the huge and exciting variety available for hand and machine work. (metallic, hand-dyed. Rayon, perle etc)

Wool, synthetic yarns, chenille, raffia, braid, ribbon, cord, string, fringing,etc.In fact anything that you think could make an interesting texture. The bigger the variety, the more you can experiment.

Optional: beads, buttons, sequins, sequin waste, soft metal wire, hand-made paper

Optional: fabric crayons or pens

Optional: heat or water-soluble fabric, tyvek


• Pins, regular and appliqué
• Rotary cutter with sharp blade, cutting mat and plastic rulers of your choice.
• Scissors: embroidery and paper
• Fabric marking pens or pencils for light and dark fabric
• Stabilizer of you choice, either tear-away or iron-on.

Batting: approx 1yd x 11/2 yd


• journal/notebook with pen or pencil

10 squares cotton fabric approx 12" sq for experimental work. They can be plain ,patterned or striped. A variety of fabrics which can include textured and plain cotton, silk, satin, velvet, corduroy, brocade, lame, linen and any of the exciting sheers available. These can range from scraps to fat quarters or more in your choice of solids, hand-dyes,or almost solids (e.g. subtle stripes, geometrics etc in tone-on-tone colors) You will be working primarily in TEXTURE so the color choice can be reduced but you may bring as many as you like. Make sure you include variations in value from light to dark.

Look at texture everywhere! Look around your home, food, clothes, jewelry, garden, beach, street, buildings etc. Try to find books or images that suggest texture eg. Hard, soft, shiny, matt, fluffy, spiky, rough, smooth

Bring whatever images and ideas you can to class