About the workshop

This workshop focuses on experiencing the world right outside our window, promoting awareness and connection to nature through exploration, collage building, and repurposing textiles. By reflecting on the environmental impact of textile production and consumption—particularly its relationship with water—participants will gain a deeper understanding of how their actions affect the world. Our interaction with textiles influences water usage, waste disposal, and pollution, making mindful choices essential to sustainability

Day 1: Nature Printing on Upcycled Textiles and Linen

Connect with nature by scavenging as a group for interesting leaves to incorporate into your work around the museum. Participants will print on acrylic paper and cloth using permanent textile ink, exploring their unique creative voices. We’ll also discuss printing on garments to revitalize and extend the life of your wardrobe while reducing landfill waste. (Please bring one light-colored garment to experiment with.)

Your materials fee includes an instructor-curated kit with:

Templates, a variety of textiles, brushes, acrylic paper, a soft foam brayer.

Instructor will provide a number of other materials and equipment to be used in class.

What to bring:

Newspapers or magazines that can be torn apart
Safety pins (available for purchase from the instructor if needed)

Please wear clothes suitable for painting, as textile inks are permanent. Aprons will be provided. Note that our building is climate-controlled to protect artworks on display, so the classroom may feel cool even on warmer days.

Day 2: Meditative Hand-Stitching and Collage Building

Hand-stitching is a sustainable, portable, and lifelong skill that produces beautiful textures while encouraging rhythmic, mindful focus. In this session, we’ll use the printed textiles from Day 1 as inspiration, stitching shapes reminiscent of objects on a map with running and echo stitches. The instructor will share techniques for manipulating textiles to add visual interest to your collages and reflect on the environmental concerns we collectively face. By the end of the workshop, participants will see hand-stitching as a low-footprint creative practice, a source of inspiration, and a meaningful way to mend garments and household items.

About the Instructor

Maday is a bilingual art educator devoted to sustainability. She is a published artist, author, and speaker based in the Midwest, committed to bringing innovation and artistry to the forefront of her work. Her mission is to nurture artistic platforms across cultures and generations, fostering creative expression while finding ways to minimize our environmental footprint.

Learning from cultural textile traditions and exchanging powerful stories continue to be sources of inspiration that she hopes to share with others. Her goal is to unite students with diverse skill sets and share her love of art and vibrant textiles sustainably. She combines painting, weaving, hand-stitching (her favorite), machine sewing, and embroidery to infuse her creations with energy—paying homage to her Cuban upbringing. She loves the art of collage and storytelling through new and pre-loved textiles, favoring upcycled materials and scraps as a way to honor the environment.

In her spare time, she creates and maintains community gardens and has donated new sewing machines to nonprofits since 2015 in the hopes of sparking creativity and supporting knowledge-based initiatives that foster economic prosperity and cultural traditions.

Maday’s work has been featured on The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims, as well as in international and national publications and periodicals in her home state. She presented virtually to design students at the Indian Institute of Art & Design in New Delhi, India, in 2020 and currently teaches at folk schools, quilt shops, quilt shows, and guilds across the U.S.

Follow her adventures on Instagram: @sustainabletextiledesign.