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BUY TICKETS
YOUR COURSE TUTOR
Caroline Sharkey
Embellishing the Surface is Caroline’s way of creating textures that are interesting and change the way You as the viewer look at fabric. Stitching into the surface gives her a changing palette and adding colours brings the artwork and new fabric surfaces to life.
“In her art practise her approach is to chop the fabrics into small confetti styled pieces, and then mix the colours and textures to create beautiful new fabrics.
Caroline travels to teach her unique techniques of fabric embellishments and many different textile workshops. She loves to inspire and encourage everyone to experience the creative side of Textile Art. Teaching and exhibiting internationally, Caroline is also a judge at quilt shows in Australia and internationally.
Caroline owns The Digital Cloth an online E-magazine bringing artists, craftspeople and their art practise stories to readers 4-5 times a year in this popular magazine. The Digital Cloth has readers from over 20 countries and is growing every year.
The Desert Threads Art Prize challenge for the Uluru Retreat, ‘Sewing Up a Storm in the Desert’ every 2 years. The Coastal Threads Art Prize for the Urunga Coastal Retreat annually, these collections travel for exhibitions and promoting Textile Art both here in Australia and overseas on tour.
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Experiment with free machine embroidery, water-soluble fabrics and embellishments to finish your original artworks.
Learn to master techniques as you go, look at colour in a new way and play with all those fantastic fabric bits!
This exciting workshop will develop many ideas for future projects.
You will learn to use your sewing machine to create beautiful surface embellishments. -
Please bring the following on your first day of class:
Sewing Machine in good working order with the user’s manual if possible
Free Motion - Darning foot that fits your machine….Please check this at home and or with your machine shop/dealer and don’t forget your electric machine lead (this often gets left at home)
Sewing machine attached table
Spare sewing machine needles I suggest topstitch or jeans needles
Sharp scissors and small scissors
Normal sewing requirements
OPTIONAL: Pencil and paper to draw and take extra notes and diagrams
OPTIONAL: Black fine tip marking pen
OPTIONAL: A water-soluble pen
OPTIONAL: Small sandwich bags for fabric clippings
A few paint brushes
Water container
Plastic ice cream container lid (for a paint pallet)
A piece of plastic to protect the table to paint on
Paper towels
An old towel to help with drying fabric
Fabrics:
50cm x 50cmm [medium blue] fabric for the underwater background this will be covered with chopped fabrics
30cm heavy craft tulle in light blue colours
20cm sky blue Crystal Organza fabric
20cm pretty green Crystal Organza fabric
10cm light blue Crystal Organza
Variety small amounts of scraps of special/glitzy and textural fabrics in watery and reef colours like pink, red, yellow, purple, grey, orange
Fabric scrap examples could be.... Silks, organza, tulle, lace, lame and any interesting fabrics from your stash of fabrics to create the parts of the 3D reef.
Scraps of metallic, silk and cotton yarns in reef colours are also suitable for embellishing onto the artwork.
OPTIONAL: medium/small printed fish fabrics
OPTIONAL: Dyed wool fleece in sea colours (approx hand full)
Threads Poly-Cotton and Cotton sewing machine threads in suggested colours of black, white, blues, purple, greens, yellow, red, orange (and Fluoro colours optional), to suit the seascape and fish project
OPTIONAL: for painting your own fish you can bring some printed fish fabrics available from patchwork shops to embellish with machine stitching
Bring your camera to document your stitching of techniques and the finished underwater Artworks of the class.
This class has an extra materials cost of $40, which is payable directly to the tutor.
Once you book your ticket, the tutor will be in touch to arrange payment.
Cost includes:
Stablisers
Patterns
Shared paints
Other essential supplies
There will be a limited number of Full Seascape kits, including the product kit ,available $185 each. The deadline to order these is Dec 20th 2025.
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Knowledge of the basics of free machine work is an advantage for this workshop, but it can be completed by all levels of experience.
“Caroline Sharkey was amazing, friendly and generous with her skills.”
“Caroline made the class loads of fun while we learnt a new technique. This was my second class with Caroline. I hope she returns next year.”
“Caroline is a perfect mix of knowledge and fun. We all learnt lots of new techniques, were encouraged to explore our creative side and laughed a lot over the three days.”
