Writing Home (Home/Making Edition)

Embroidered words have a long and rich history connected to ideas of domesticity, homemaking and decorative arts. Embroidery samplers, framed home blessings, and cross-stitch kits of the ubiquitous “home sweet home,” function as symbols of nostalgia and coziness. In this workshop, we invite you to consider what words and home mean within broader contexts of ecologies and contemporary society. How do we write home now?

In this drop-in session, you will bring a quote or a short memo to write about what is home, how do you write about home? What does it mean to write home? Gen Moisan will show how text can be machine-embroidered onto a swath of fabric repurposed from domestic textiles. You will learn how to design and integrate written words onto textiles. Morris Fox, as a poet and textile artist, will help participants dream up their quotes and how to edit words into home-sweet-home poems.

Participants will be shown how design techniques and software work on the Tajima embroidery machine, using different text formats, fonts, and textures. You will have the opportunity to see your text embroidered live using the digital thread placement machine at the Textiles and Materiality Cluster.

Participants are encouraged to bring design ideas and quotes to the workshop. 

This is a drop-in event; registration is not required.