Five-week course with textile artist Rosy Tydeman to turn personal stories into a stitched memory book using slow stitching.
Rosy Tydeman is running a five-week course in creative textiles at Exeter Phoenix, starting Tuesday 3 November. The idea is to turn stories from your own life into a textile memory book — a one-off piece of narrative artwork that you make yourself over the course of the five sessions.
Right at the start, you choose from a selection of book formats the one that best suits your creative process, and from there the workshops show how personal scraps of fabric can become a meaningful story book of life events. The practical thread throughout is slow stitching: hand sewing in a gentle, mindful way, which is said to slow breathing and offer an oasis of calm, while the act of sewing together encourages reflection on yourself and your experiences. It's as much about the process of making as it is about the finished book.
Rosy Tydeman is a textile artist with a central Exeter studio called La Vie En Rose Makery, named after the song about seeing life through rose-tinted spectacles; her work focuses on the moments of love and joy found in everyday life. She's a former teacher, shoe maker and gauntlet maker for theatre, and she ran the art cafe The Glorious Art House in Exeter until 2023, when she sold it to focus on her art and workshops.
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The course runs in the Top Studio at Exeter Phoenix on Tuesday evenings from 6.30pm to 9pm, with five weekly workshops on 3, 10, 17, 24 November and 1 December 2026. The price is £135, or £115 for a concession, subject to a £1.50 ticketing system charge.
