Skilled Hands: Creative and Historical Workshop

About

How does failure, challenge and mastery of a skill impact on identity? How do hands help and hinder the journey to skill? And why would certain professions and social classes use specific forms of stitching?

This workshop invites you to explore the meanings of skill, mastery, and identity through the hand. Drawing on examples of virtuoso stitchery, including intricate patchwork quilting, the session considers how skilled handcraft has been used to express identity, past and present.

Through the historic collections of The Quilters' Guild, you will be introduced to different types of expert stitching, who would have historically practiced them, and the social and professional contexts in which they were used. The workshop will consider how stitching intersected with class and identity and what skilled handwork reveals about the person who made it.

You will have the chance to make part of a textile sculpture with artist Ruth Singer. Selecting fabrics that reflect the workshop themes and discussion, you will use hand stitches and stuffing to create three dimensional pieces that will inform an artwork to be displayed in 2027 at The Festival of Quilts.

This workshop takes place at The Quilters’ Guild, York, and is funded the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

This workshop is free and open to those interested in quilting and other forms of handwork. All participants must be aged 18+.

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Schedule

· Welcome: about The Victorian Hand (13.00-13.20)

· Reflective activity on our hands and what they do (13.20-13.40)

· Collections visit (13.40-14.20)

. Coffee/tea break (14.20-14.30)

· Discussion of collections (14.30-14.45)

· Hands-on textile activity (14.45-15.45)

· Reflections, photographing our hands and next steps (15.45-16.00)

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Additional information

Teas and coffees will be provided for attendees.

The workshop will be audio recorded for research purposes.

The workshop space has step free access via an elevator. If you have any additional access requirements, please contact [email protected]

This workshop is part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Victorian Hand: Emotions, Embodiment and Identity project based at The University of the Arts London and Lancaster University and has been approved by the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, College Research Committee.

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