THE PLAY OF EMBROIDERY WITH ADRIANA TORRES
*basic embroidery skills suggested

Three remarkably inspired days of creative nourishment through needle and thread, delicious chef-made farm-to-table meals, and a beautiful community celebrating awe through collective effervescence.

DAY 1 : EMBROIDERED ALPHABET
On Day One, we will explore creative and clever ways to embroider letters of the alphabet. From easy stitches to more complicated, we will combine various techniques and color combinations to create one-of-a-kind interpretations of letters designed by Adriana, with room for personal interpretation. We will embroider some letters of the alphabet silk screened on a piece of cotton fabric 20” x 24”, using wool from La Patagonia, in addition to other specialty curated threads. At the end of the day, we will create a personal project designing our own flower/plant inspired letter by observing a bouquet of flowers. For reference, students will receive the A-Z alphabet printed with the names of all the stitches used in the original. We will come away with the inspiration and ability to write and stitch words or phrases using letters created from all kinds of plant and flower motifs.

DAY 2 : PLAY AND MEND
Day Two is all about playful mending. We will begin by using another piece of silk-screened fabric, this time pre-printed with a chair and sweater design as our template. During this session, we will break and slightly damage the cloth by playing a game led by Adriana. We will take different kinds of actions, such as making holes in the fabric, or tearing an edge, depending on the tools at hand (scissors, cutter, sandpaper, etc), or even taking on the persona of an animal (lion, penguin, hummingbird, etc) to create marks. We will pass the fabric from student to student, creating a sense of freedom and unattachment to the creative process, and providing an element of surprise as to the fabric each student will end up with to repair. Adriana will inspire creative and playful mending techniques not typically seen in traditional mending, such as using one of the embroidered letters learned earlier in the retreat as a mend. Get ready to open up your imagination to the endless creative possibilities for mending the things we love.

DAY 3 : RAISED EMBROIDERY WITH KNOTS
During Day Three we will learn techniques to create various stitched knots to make high-raised textures. These special raised stitches can be used to create dimensional flower petals, leaves, characters, and anything else we can gleam from our imaginations. Traditionally, the dimensional stumpwork technique was made using special tools called half-cone sticks or embroidery shoes, but Adriana developed a way to reproduce this old technique using the fingers, which she will teach. The Japa Mala and Coffee Bean stitch, also created by Adriana, will be introduced as well. Students will receive a piece of pre-printed black linen fabric, silk-screened with a white floral design inspired by her last trip to Denmark, where she encountered a beautiful moment of a bee flying inside a foxglove tulip. It was from this visual experience of the flower plus the bee that she created the two characters in this scene for us to interpret with thread. During the last hour, we will use the techniques we learned to stitch a letter using raised stitches made with knots.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

how to use simple stitches in a creative way
how to find the perfect fit between the thread thickness, stitch size, and the stitch style. (for example, most people hesitate to use the Portuguese stitch because of its complexities, but with the right combination of variables, you just might fall in love with it)
a technical approach to get the best result out of each stitch
imaginative embroidered lettering
how to turn floral and plant themes into lettering designs
how to mend using needlelace techniques
how to blend colors in needlelace to create gradients
imaginative mending ideas and techniques
raised stitches to create embroidered dimension and texture
two custom-created stitches by Adriana: Japa Mala and Coffee Bean
a stumpwork technique made in a unique and totally different way (this process will inspire you to use your imagination to embroider anything you want)

VENUE

The workshop will be held on Black Cat Organic Farm, the most ambitious farm-to-table operation in the United States. James Beard Award finalist Chef Eric Skokan and his wife Jill have created a 425-acre organic and regenerative farm that supplies the bounty of their farm dinners, the downtown Boulder restaurant Bramble & Hare, the recipient of a coveted and rare Michelin Green Star, which honors restaurants that demonstrate true commitment to sustainability, CSA’s, and a Boulder Farmers’ Market Booth. Depending on the weather, classes will either be held in a renovated 19th-century cozy boutique barn that used to hold a community blacksmith shop, or on a brick verandah surrounded by gardens and acres of fields of vegetables, herbs, legumes, and grains. Mountains capped with snow for much of the year decorate the farm’s western horizon. The setting itself, however, is extremely pastoral, with sloping fields full of vegetables, fruit trees, a broad strawberry patch, and flowers everywhere when in season. Black Cat Organic Farm’s Toulouse geese, Akbash guard dogs, and strutting groups of chickens wander the property all day, evidence of the constant symbiotic relationship of life on a working farm.

CUISINE

Using Black Cat’s Certified Organic farm as a source of creativity, Chef Eric Skokan creates an award-winning cuisine vibrant with seasonality. The culinary team behind Bramble crafts our Black Cat Makerie meals, all of which closely reflect the seasons. The kitchen draws heavily from the farm’s more than 250 varieties of organic vegetables, legumes, grains, herbs and flowers, as well as its large flock of heritage sheep and its robust population of heritage pigs, paving the way for a limitless palette of flavors, colors, and textures from which to build each food experience. From artichokes to chickpeas, tomatoes to arugula, basil to wheat to winter squash and much more, Black Cat Organic Farm nurtures it all, transforming these stellar ingredients into gorgeous dishes. Each day of the retreat begins with a delicious homemade morning snack, followed by a hearty, fresh-from-the-fields lunch, and a delectable afternoon nibble. New this year! As an optional add-on, one very special farm dinner will be shared with our retreat community as part of the Black Cat Makerie experience. Surrounded by pastoral beauty and pampered with warm hospitality, guests who attend Black Cat Farm Dinners enjoy culinary experiences unlike any other in Colorado. The farm team devotes hours every day to harvesting these ingredients, then crafting them into outstanding dishes that mirror what is thriving in the fields. Many guests dine in private, glass-walled cabanas spread out across the farm, with views of rolling hills, organic agricultural fields and snow-capped mountains. We can’t wait for you to experience it all for yourself.