Drawing with Stitch: Natural Dye and Hand Embroidery | a 2-day workshop

Thread as a pencil: Sophie Bowen's two-day natural dye and stitch workshop

The premise here is that thread can do what pencil does: trace line, suggest movement, build texture across a surface. Sophie Bowen, a Somerset-based textile artist who studied Drawing at Falmouth and completed an MA in Textiles at Bath Spa University, runs this two-day workshop as an introduction to treating embroidery as mark-making rather than decoration.

The workshop opens with colour: you'll work with seasonal dye plants to dye a selection of yarns and threads, building a palette from the muted, unpredictable tones that plant-based pigment produces. From there, simple drawing exercises feed into the stitch work, which is done on paper rather than fabric. Direction, spacing and density do the work that shading and line weight do in a drawn sketch. Natural dye inks are an option for additional layering.

You leave with a small finished piece and the foundations of a working practice in natural dye and stitch.

Suitable for beginners. Ages 18+.

Thursday–Friday 13–14 August 2026 · New Brewery Arts, Brewery Court, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 1JH · 10am–4pm each day