Japanese Tea Garden Embroidered Postcards Workshop with Robert Mahar

Date: Saturday, August 31

Time: 10am-12:00pm

Location: San Francisco County Fair Building, Recreation Room

Workshop Description:
Calling all intrepid travelers! Join artist Robert Mahar to create custom souvenirs of the iconic Japanese Tea Garden in the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. He searched near and far for a collection of vintage JTG travel postcards that were then digitally restored, reprinted and made ready for your embroidery embellishment. Learn about sashiko, a form of Japanese embroidery and apply its classic motifs to your postcards. Instruction will guide you through best practices for stitching on paper, including the transfer of imagery and patterns, and clever finishing techniques. The resulting set can be displayed as reminders of your JTG adventures, or sent to loved ones as deliverable mail art.

This workshop ventures around many traditional techniques and embraces an approach to embroidery that is more freeform in nature, allowing you to stitch paper in a fun and unique way. Choose your own adventure, selecting a palette, design and stitch placements all your own. This is a project well suited for adventurous beginners, no previous experience necessary. Please note that while you’ll receive a set of Japanese Tea Garden postcards, you’ll learn stitching techniques that can be applied to examples in your own collection.

Materials:
All materials are provided and included in the cost of the class. Each material kit includes: a set of custom printed paper postcards, practice fabric, a limited palette of embroidery floss, adhesive, embroidery needle and cutting mat. However, if you have favorite embroidery tools or prefer specific colors of embroidery floss (6-strand or perle) you are encouraged to bring these items to the workshop.

About the Instructor:
Robert Mahar is a California-based artist and educator who teaches thoughtfully researched and developed hands-on projects based in historical craft traditions. He’s also a proud contestant alumni, and subsequent associate producer, on NBC’s crafting competition show Making It with Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman. With an education in studio arts and art history, he has worked in a variety of creative fields including 13 years as an appraiser of modern and contemporary art. Learn more about Robert, explore his video tutorial archive and shop his collection of curious embroidery samplers at robert-mahar.com.

GGGP Members: You are entitled to a 20% discount for this event. To secure your discount, please log-in to your account before registering or enter the Member Discount Code in the “Promo Code” field when registering. For the Member Discount Code for this offering, please contact membership@gggp.org.