Making Zen 2025 – FREE Online Retreat
Registrations for Making Zen are now open! Making Zen is a FREE five-day online event for hand stitchers and crafters. 30+ textile artists will guide you through workshops on a range of stitching techniques and creative processes.
Making Zen runs from 26th-30th May. Each day, there will be new workshops available for 24 hours which we will create along with together.
It’s a great way to discover new artists and techniques. If you’re homeschooling, it’s an opportunity to explore some new crafts together.
I’m presenting one of the workshops! We will be making a zero waste toy: Humpty Dumpty. It’s suitable for a young child and can be sewn by machine or by hand.
Humpty has an old-fashioned toy kind of vibe, almost 1930s, and can be embellished any way you like (or not at all); it’s a blank canvas for your creativity.
The pattern is zero waste, and if you’ve never used a zero waste pattern before this is an easy place to start. As I guide you through the workshop I’ll be talking about the design process and giving you sewing tips you can use for other things. The session goes for about half an hour (I’m not yet sure which day mine will be on.)
If you want to revisit the sessions and get a bundle of additional resources, you can upgrade to a VIP pass. The VIP pass has a gift from every artist, and I’ve made something especially for it. It’s a pocket zine, which is both pocket-sized and has patterns for pockets in it.
What’s in it? Readers of A Year of Zero Waste Sewing, or the complimentary January chapter, may remember the pocket matrix (page 7). It’s a modular shape containing all the pocket pieces nested together, and works well if you’re cutting the pockets in a different fabric. The first one I designed looked great on paper but I couldn’t get it to work in reality – I just couldn’t get the angles and sizes right. I gave up, but included the concept in case anyone else wanted to try it.
Anyway, earlier this year I re-visited the pocket matrix and nailed it! The zine contains a kangaroo pouch pocket, two back pockets and a pen pocket, nested into a rectangle. There’s also an in-seam pocket, and a separate pdf file of the patterns in case you don’t like drafting them yourself.
So, if you’d like to try Humpty Dumpty for free, and take part in other creative workshops, do register and I hope to see you there.
Cheers! Liz
*Note that the links are affiliate ones; if you decide to order a VIP pass, then the artist benefits.