Saturday 18 & Sunday 19 May 2024, Making an Endangered Bird Puppet with Susie Vickery
Online workshop, hosted on Zoom by Susie Vickery
Images courtesy of @raquelarand.a
Saturday 18 & Sunday 19 May 2024 at 15:00 - 18:00 BST (British Summer Time)
Susie Vickery worked for over two decades as a costumier for theatre in the UK and Australia. After moving to South Asia she studied embroidery by distance learning and worked as a craft consultant with income-generation projects in India, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, and Turkey, responding to local materials and artistic traditions. She has facilitated community art projects, in informal settlements in Mumbai, with women’s groups in rural Nepal, with indigenous Huichol in Mexico, and with indigenous Australians and refugees. This work inspires her embroideries.
Having lived in Nepal and India for 20 years, Susie’s embroideries are influenced by South Asian popular culture, especially old Bollywood posters with their rich saturated colours, kitsch imagery and garish delight in superimposing pattern on pattern. She uses layers of recycled fabrics and embroidery to create portraits and began making embroidered and appliquéd puppets, automata and animations to give movement to her embroideries as she found that the interaction can get people’s attention, make them smile, and sometimes make them think.
Access to Susie Vickery's Meet the Maker event on Sunday 14 April 2024 at 14:00 BST will be included in the cost of this workshop. You can either attend the live event or catch-up on the recording. To find out more details about the event, please go to the Meet the Maker page on our website here.
Outline of the workshop
In this workshop you will create your own interactive endangered bird puppet. It can be one from your own area. You will get the materials for making a red-tailed black cockatoo, or a pink cockatoo, but can also use your own fabrics to make a different bird. Your bird can also be imaginary, allowing you to go wild with the colours and embellishments.
In the first session we will make all the pieces and start to decorate them. We will begin by cutting the shapes from the template and then decorate the sections, using appliqué and embroidery, adding as much or as little as you need to. In the second session we will assemble the birds and get them moving. We will add weights and attach the birds to their mount and then thread the cords to make the movement.
At the end of the workshop you will have enough knowledge to create your own species of bird puppet. You can use the templates to create your own bird. Susie will show you how to change the shapes to suit your chosen species.
Level of experience required
Some sewing or making experience
Materials
A material pack will be sent to participants in advance of the workshop containing the following materials:
Pattern template for birds and written instructions
- Tracing paper
- Fabric
- Felt
- Stiffening
- Thick felt for hanging
- Weights for wings x 2
- Screw eyes for the frame
- Small hanging ring
- Embroidery needles
- Embroidery threads
- Cord for movement
- Small buttons for attaching the wings
- Materials in the kits may vary but will always be similar to those pictured
In addition, participants need to provide:
- Small scissors for fabric
- Paper scissors
- Extra embroidery threads
- Extra fabric scraps
- Iron
- Pins
- Paper and pencil
- Tailors’ chalk or other fabric marker
- Hole punch or awl for making holes in fabric (you can also use a large knitting needle or a chopstick with a pointy end)
Please note: material packs are shipped on an insured, trackable delivery service. Any customs duties, delays, lost or undeliverable packs are the responsibility of the customer. Once a material pack leaves the workshop tutors' hands with a tracking number, the seller has no further obligation to the buyer.
Workshop recording
The workshop will be recorded and the recording made available to you after the workshop.
Workshop Cancellation Policy
All places reserved for workshops are non refundable. However, if you let us know you are not able to make a workshop you have booked at least two weeks prior to the event, we will offer a credit note.
If you require additional information about this workshop please contact the events team, events@selvedge.org.