Threads of Nature: Botanical Mixed Media Embroidery

Immerse yourself in five days of creative exploration, inspiration, and hands-on making at a peaceful working farm. Threads of Nature is a unique retreat dedicated to the art of mixed media embroidery, where drawing, color, painting, and stitching come together to tell textured, expressive stories grounded in the natural world.

Each day features guided demonstrations and hands-on workshops that weave together foundational techniques and experimental approaches. Participants will explore observational drawing, intuitive mark-making, layered painting, and expressive hand embroidery to create richly layered textile artworks. With fields, flora, and seasonal landscapes as both backdrop and muse, this retreat invites you to slow down, connect with your environment, and cultivate your creative voice.

At its core, embroidery is an ancient and global craft—one with roots in nearly every culture. In Western and American contexts, it has often been dismissed as mere “women’s work” or categorized as decorative and old-fashioned. But embroidery is so much more than that. It is a universal, tactile language—a quiet but powerful form of expression that connects us across time, geography, and tradition.

This retreat will honor embroidery’s multifaceted history while also challenging preconceived notions about what it can be. Whether practiced in solitude as a meditative exercise or in the company of others as a shared creative ritual, embroidery offers space for personal reflection, connection, and artistic discovery.

Whether you’re a seasoned artist or a curious beginner, you’ll leave with a personal body of work, new techniques, and a deeper connection to your artistic process—and to the land that inspired it.

What’s Included:

• Daily demonstrations in mixed media techniques: drawing, color studies, surface painting, and stitching
• Guided workshops with one-on-one and group feedback
• Ample studio and outdoor time for independent creation
• Inspiration walks and sketching on the farm
• Artist talk & presentation by Sarah K. Benning

Let the rhythms of nature and the quiet strength of thread guide your hand as you stitch your way into new creative territory.

Skills and Techniques:

Drawing & Composition:

• Observational sketching from botanical specimens and the natural landscape
• Gesture and contour drawings to loosen and energize marks
• Compositional planning for textile surfaces
• Translating sketchbook work into switchable designs

Color & Surface Design

• Developing color palettes inspired by the environment
• An introduction to color theory
• Mixing paint and layering paint on fabric and paper

Textile & Embroidery Techniques

• Basic and advanced hand embroidery techniques (backstitch, whipped stitch, satin stitch, colonial knots, grid stitch, chain stitch, couching, etc.)
• Working with fibers: combining threads and yarns, fabric selection
• Stitching into painted or collaged surfaces
• Using fiber for texture and emphasis

Creative Development & Process

• Developing a personal visual vocabulary through repeated motifs and intuitive mark-making
• Building a sketch-to-stitch workflow
• Cultivating mindfulness through slow making
• Encouraging creative risk-taking and process over perfection

Materials Fee: $45 paid directly to the instructor. Fee covers a variety of fabrics and paper, embroidery hoops and stretchers, needles, a wide selection of threads and yarns, fabric-safe paints, brushes, mixing palettes, drawing materials, scissors and thread snips

Special Tools or Equipment to bring: Participants should bring personal sketchbooks and any specific/special preferred fabric they may want to use.

Workshop and Cancellation Policies: Please be sure to read our 2026 policies before you register for a workshop: https://www.sanbornmills.org/workshop-policies/ 

Housing for this workshop is limited. Please email karen@sanbornmills.org for more information