Material Lineages

Description

In every cloth lies a story, a spell, and a lineage. This workshop invites participants to explore textiles not only as carriers of memory, but as vessels of magic, ritual, and sustainability. We will trace the threads that connect our work to those who spun, wove, and mended before us---family, community, and the more-than-human world.

Through guided making, storytelling, and shared reflection we will:

✨ Invoke textile lineages--honoring the makers, traditions, and materials that shape our practice

✨ Explore ritual in fiber work-- stitches as incantations, cloth as protective cloth, making as a form of devotion

✨ Weave sustainability into action--using reclaimed fabrics, natural fibers, and mindful processes that hone the land and reduce waste

✨ Uncover the magic of mending and making--as acts of healing, grieving, remembrance, and resistance.

Participants will leave with a small, self-made textile talisman and a deeper sense of connection to the unseen thread linking craft, ancestors, and the earth. No prior textile experience is needed--only curiosity and a willingness to listen to the stories cloth embodies.

📍Event Details

Tuesday, December 9 · 6 - 8 pm

Limited to 7 participants

$27

Additional Details:

Registration required. Registration closes 24 hours prior to the event.

The registration fee is non-refundable unless the event is canceled by the facilitator.

Parking Information

Shakti in the Mountains Website

✨ Led by Rebecca Tolley

Rebecca Tolley earned her BS in Studio Art from ETSU in 1994 where she studied weaving, ceramics, painting, sculpture, and jewelry & metalsmithing. In her day job she supports learning and research as a professor and academic librarian at ETSU and has taught introduction to women’s gender, and sexuality studies since 2011. She was in the SouthArts Emerging Traditional Artists Program’s 2024 cohort for her quiltmaking; their funding let her advance her understanding of quiltmaking with Mary Ann and China Pettaway of Gee’s Bend Quilts (AL). As the 2025 E. Geoffrey and Elizabeth Thayer Verney Fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association, her current research explores the overlooked history of mid-century embroidery correspondence courses, with special attention to their cultural, educational, and economic significance in postwar America.

Learn more about Rebecca here.