Teaching Workshops

While I have taught over the years in the Textiles Workshop at the Australian National University, in 2020 I began teaching to a wider audience. This began with teaching at Grampians Textures (2020 and 2022) and at Fibres West in 2023, both residential schools. My studio has become a location for teaching in small groups. These range from hand embroidery for beginners to machine embroidery on all levels.

I love to give talks about my work, particularly since publishing Exuberance, An Embroiderer’s Perspective with Carol Cooke.

Some of the workshops include:

Turning the colour wheel: this two-day workshop help students understand colour through stitch. We examine the age-old colour wheel to see how we can make it a contemporary tool for stitch.

Title: Conscious creativity: Finding you voice and developing concepts. This five-six day workshop uses resourceful and inventive routes to finding our voices. Learning about design thinking, developing strategies and concepts, problem solving and setting goals will be our path. The workshop is for a broad range of participants: from less experienced, to those delving deeper into a more conscious way of working. While making and constructing is central to the thinking and creating behind the workshop, no specific technique will be taught. In digging deep from within, you will come away with a portfolio of ideas ready for making, no matter what textile technique you use.

-Basic machine embroidery - 2 days -

-Stitching Gardenscapes - 2 days. This is either machine or hand embroidery.

-Machine embroidery on soluble fabric - 2 day

-Advanced machine embroidery - 2 day

Basic Machine Embroidery

Explore local gardens through machine embroidery over two days. This workshop uses layers of fabric to give depth and simple stitches to enhance plant-life. You will be helped through recreating flowers and backgrounds which reflect Canberra. Cost $150 plus $15 materials

This workshop is for basic to advanced machine stitchers. Students will learn to applique plants and flowers using fusible webbing. Participants will be provided with a basic kit containing the template, base fabric, fabrics for piecing, Vliesofix, and soluble fabric. Please bring a small notebook (or if you keep a sketchbook bring that along) for writing out thoughts and ideas.  

Participants will bring their own sewing machines. Your sewing machine needs to be in good working order and bring along all feet (darning or free motion embroidery, as well as normal sewing foot, essential), accessories, manual & extension table. You will need to know how to lower, or on some models, cover the feed teeth. 

Participants will also need to bring a variety of machine embroidery threads, in particular greens, browns/tans for garden path and flowers; scissors (both paper and fabric), extra machine needles, pins, 6-10 safety pins and pencils for tracing. 

Sharon Peoples has worked as an artist in Canberra for over 20 years, exhibiting nationally and internationally as well as taking on commissioned work. Her art practice focuses on textiles, both hand and machine embroidery. Peoples’ work has been collected by national and state institutions. In recent years Sharon has been exploring gardens through portraits: the inner secret garden, artists’ gardens and gardens of the imagination. Fragility of both the environment and the human condition is reflected in the medium: oscillating between hand and machine embroidery to examine this state. 

 Class numbers: Max 6

Sharon Peoples Studio, 46 Miller Street, O’Connor. peoples@grapevine.com.au

Machine embroidery on Soluble fabric

Join embroiderer, Sharon Peoples, for an exciting one-day workshop in machine embroidered soluble fabrics. You will make innovative textiles and improve your skills as a machine embroiderer. Cost $150 plus $10 material fees (soluble fabric and other incidental textiles) 

In the workshop, we will explore the use of soluble fabrics with free machine embroidery and examine ways of using these textiles. This includes making a lace-like fabrics with threads, scraps of fabric, left-over fibres etc., and creating free machine embroidered flowers and leaves, embellishments and lace borders. We will also explore ‘appliqueing’ onto soluble fabric so that participants can make small motifs of solid colour.

Participants will create a small work (30cm x 30cm) using insect, leaf or bird motifs. We will explore making a border. Small samples will be made for your resources for future reference. The techniques covered may be applied to a wide range of textiles from artwork to clothing. I am happy to discuss other individual projects that will fit into a single day timeframe. 

The class will cover designing for machine embroidered lace-like structures. We will begin by making a variety of samples using soluble fabric stretched on embroidery hoops and learning tricks for washing out soluble fabric. We will then draw up the design, transfer it to the soluble fabric, embroider it, then wash out and dry. 

Class numbers: Max 6

Sharon Peoples Studio, 46 Miller Street, O’Connor.

peoples@grapevine.com.au