Category Archives: workshops

Join Sue Stone’s Weekend Workshop in Cardiff

I am delighted to announce that tickets are now on sale for my weekend workshop ‘People & their Stories‘. It will take place on 26 & 27 April 2025 at Beth Morris Workshops in Cardiff.

Spaces are limited so please sign up now to secure your place. I am looking forward to meeting you in Cardiff next Spring!

About the weekend workshop

This 2 day workshop, ‘People & their Stories’ will introduce you to creating illustrative, stitched portraits using hand stitch and appliqué.

My teaching style is one of individual, personal tuition throughout the workshop. I will start by guiding you through the straightforward techniques that I use in my work.

I will also bring a collection of my small works and personal samples. You can use them as inspiration for your own work.

The workshop is suitable for all abilities and will include:

How to transform your own drawings or photos into a starting point for a stitched piece
How to get started using uncomplicated techniques of image transfer to fabric
Drawing with simple stitches, like back stitch and running stitch
Using sampling to help decide on techniques and designs
Exploring appliqué techniques
How to add simple background details like text to help tell your subject’s story.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll have begun a small portrait to continue at home. You will also be equipped with skills to develop your own figurative work further.

Your portrait can be of a real or imaginary person. They can be known or unknown to you. Each picture has its own story to tell.

More Information

Pre-Workshop Preparation

Materials and fabrics will be provided but please feel free to bring some of your own favourite fabrics and threads. This will give you a deeper connection to your work.

The aim of the workshop is for you to produce work that is personal to you. It’s also helpful if you choose colours that love and which suit your starting image.

Please bring a choice of your own drawings or photographs to use as inspiration. I will send you some guidelines for selecting and adapting suitable images before the workshop.

Important: If you are a beginner, you should choose a simple starting photograph or drawing like those shown below.

About Sue Stone

My work is inspired by people and places. I’m best known for textural, figurative work which tells a story. My emphasis is on hand embroidery, often mixed with machine stitch, appliqué, and paint.

I have exhibited my work widely throughout the UK and Europe. I have also exhibited in Australia, Japan, Pakistan, and the USA.

I have taught ‘in person’ workshops throughout the UK, and in France, USA and Canada. I also teach online courses for textileartist.org which is run by my two sons Joe & Sam Pitcher.

Don’t forget to add these dates to your diary!

The workshop will take place on 26 & 27 April 2025 at Beth Morris Workshops in Cardiff.

Sign up now to secure your place on my ‘People and Their Stories’ weekend workshop.

I am looking forward to meeting you in Cardiff next Spring!

What is a Portrait?

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People and Their Stories

Sunday May 26 to Saturday June 1 2024

Hudson River Valley Workshops, USA

The aim of this workshop is to encourage exploration and experimentation and to question what we really mean by portrait.

We usually think of a portrait as an artistic representation which captures the likeness of a person but even more important is to capture their personality and tell their story and in the case of a portrait of more than one person to capture the interaction or lack of interaction between them.

I’d love you to join me in the USA and have fun telling your stories with needle and thread.

For more information & enrolment please go to: https://www.artworkshops.com/workshop/people-and-their-stories-with-sue-stone/

Retrospective – an archive of work made in 2022

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A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour version 1 30 x 30 cms & version 2 • 33 x 28 cms

Version 1 was shown at the Uk Knitting & Stitching shows in the 62 Group of Textile Artists Essence exhibition celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Group.

These are very poignant pieces which capture the essence of my creative practice: textural stitch, appliqué and paint combine to create the allusion of a journey to another place and time. It is a poignant work depicting the visit of grandmother to a grandson she never met. He was born 3 weeks after she died. The Grimsby girl, my Mum, Muriel is shown as a child in this piece. She never had the opportunity to travel outside the UK in her lifetime; here she travels to Copenhagen where her grandson, Sam currently lives with his wife, Eliana.

A Step into the Unknown 2022 – revamped version • mixed media • 74 x 52 cms

Lost in a Strange World 2022 • mixed media – 74 x 52 cms

A selection of samples made for my Cast of Characters workshop for Textileartist.org

A selection of samples made for my Off the Grid workshop for Textileartist.org

Do you have a story to tell in stitch?

Fancy joining me in April 2023 at Hudson River Valley Workshops, in New York State, USA?

Dates: Sunday 16 April to Saturday 22 April 2023

This experimental workshop will focus on combining several images to create a real or imagined journey. The aim of the workshop is to encourage exploration and experimentation to capture the spirit of the journey and the people, real or imagined, who will accompany you on that journey.

Here’s the concept behind the ‘Journey Through Time’ workshop

Brooklyn:Recollection, Return & Repartee 2021

Your journey could take the form of a Travelogue as in my USA Travelogue work Brooklyn: ‘Recollection, Return & Repartee’ (above) or it could take the form of a journey through life by incorporating more than one image of a specific person as in ‘My Portrait of a Grimsby Girl.’ (below)

You could push your imagination and take a real person on an imagined journey. In ‘A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour’ series I take my Mum to places she was never able to visit but that I think she would have loved.

A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour – Copenhagen

Or ask ‘What if?’ And make a portrait of yourself or of your chosen person in another time or place .

Enjoy historical details by asking ‘What if I visited the Tudor period?’ or a different culture by asking ‘What if I could go to Japan? ‘A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour – Tokyo’. Or simply ask what if I take some 1930s Grimsby Girls to modern day London as in ‘RIP Grimsby St E2’ as in RIP Grimsby St E2 which is set in the east End of London.

This is primarily a hand/machine stitch workshop but you will have the option to focus entirely on hand stitch, or machine stitch, choose to combine both techniques or add appliqué and mixed media.

The techniques used in this workshop are suitable for all abilities.

You are asked to bring a selection of drawings or photographs, text or anecdotes you wish to include or use as personal inspiration for your work. A full guide to choosing suitable images to work from will be sent out in advance of the workshop.

Enrolment is now open for my 5 day narrative workshop.

I look forward to meeting you in the USA!

https://www.artworkshops.com/workshop/4210/

Shift : A change in direction.
Allusion: A suggestion or hint that calls something to mind without mentioning it.

Sue Stone Solo Exhibition ‘ Shifts & Allusions’ 2023

Venue: The Hub, Navigation Wharf, Carre Street, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, NG34 7TW

formerly the National Centre for Craft and Design

Exhibition runs from14 January to 12th March 2023 in the ground floor gallery.

I have been busy sorting out the work to show in my Shifts & Allusions exhibition and in this exhibition I will be inviting you to find the stories behind my compositions and work out for yourself what they mean.

Most of my work contains a nod to my Grimsby heritage. The fish has become my signature and it often appears somewhere in my work. This exhibition includes a selection of larger narrative works made between 2013 and 2022, some of which haven’t been shown before. They are shown alongside some new smaller studies and a selection of tactile handling samples which show some of the techniques I have used in the finished pieces.

I will be giving a gallery talk at 2pm on Sat 18 February 2023 and a teaching a one day workshop at the Hub on Sunday 19 February

‘A Focus on Faces • an introduction to illustrative portraits

Textileartist.org Stitch Club

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I will be teaching my workshop ‘Off the Grid’ in the Textileartist.org Stitch Club from 26 September to 7 October 2022

https://training.textileartist.org/stitchclub-closed/ This link will take you to a form to get notifications when Stitch Club registrations opens. This will be very soon and it’s a very short window so don’t miss out!

Off the Grid •

Experimenting with Texture and Pattern in Hand Stitch

The aim of the workshop is

To encourage exploration and experimentation
To use positive limitations to develop your skills in decision making.
To help you develop an understanding of the importance of thread choice and how it affects the surface quality of your work.
To push your your stitches to their full potential and create more surface texture.
To have fun trying out stitches that are new to you and find out what they can do.

There’s also a new article on Textileartist.org about where I find my inspiration written by Mary Carson

Sue Stone: Inspiration lies in the details

New Article on Textileartist.org

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I’m really excited to be teaching again for TextileArtist.org Stitch Club next week. It’s a textile story telling workshop and this week they have published a new article about my New York travel story pieces. Check it out here.

Textileartist.org Stitch Club

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I recently taught an online workshop called ‘ The Power of 3’ for the Textileartist.org Stitch Club.

This workshop explores the power of positive limitations ; as a design tool, to create colour schemes, or to audition fabrics and threads for your next piece of work. Use fabric strip weaving and hand stitching to embrace the power of 3 as a starting point; 3 different coloured fabrics, 3 different coloured threads, and 3 stitches.

This simple exercise provides easy way to get rid of the blank page and give a ‘quick start’ to a piece of work. Work with the limitations to achieve a cohesive result and use the grid made by the strip weaving to add pattern, texture or even include a simple line drawing.

The members of Stitch Club produced some amazing work. Here’s a small selection.