Speaker: Shelly Stokes
Introduce yourself and show us what you made in the Sculptural Embroidery course.
Shelly Stokes: Hi, my name is Shelley Stokes. I am a textiles artist in Central Mexico and I've just finished up the course with Meredith and had a wonderful, wonderful time. These are a few of the things that I made during the course. I tried to, you know, limit myself to things that, that were a little bit smaller and didn't require me to, use multiple hoops just because, I know it's easy to get carried away and I wanted to be able to get through the entire process a few times during the course. Since then I've started working on a larger piece. This will be about 16 inches across when I'm finished and I'm just having loads of fun and so glad that I ventured off on this path.
Why did you join the Sculptural Embroidery course and what did you get out of the course?
Shelly Stokes: One of my friends in an online group sent me a link to Meredith's website and the free course that she offers. And I was fortunate to have a few materials on hand that I could just kind of try out the process. And immediately I was definitely convinced that I wanted to take the full course and I was very lucky that one was scheduled, just a few weeks later. What did I get out of the course? How about everything? Really? It, it was, all of the nuts and bolts, technical information, all of very, very complete videos and instructions on how to go about working in the way that, that Meredith works. And, it's lovely to have the Facebook group and the, the Facebook live sessions. And it's really nice that, that, you know, after you take the course, you can go back and just go back and review or look things up if your machine is giving you trouble or, or whatever you're doing. So I think the fact that the course is out there for course alumni is, is really nice.
What was your favourite thing about the Sculptural Embroidery course?
Shelly Stokes: I think that my favourite thing about the course is just how complete it is. I'm also an instructor and I know what goes into putting courses together. And I just love the fact that Meredith included everything. It's the mechanical things about your machine. You know, how to put the spool in the right position on the machine to, to sew properly. The sewing techniques. But also, you know, getting into lots of other things like design considerations, what makes a good design, what doesn't and troubleshooting tips and, you know, if it's something that you need to know you'll find it and I really, really appreciate how thorough and complete the course is from start to finish.
What would you say to someone who was considering taking this course in the future?
Shelly Stokes: I totally recommend this course to learn how to do this type of free motion embroidery. It really just, it's very complete, it's well paced and it was a lot of fun. There's good support, there's good feedback, from other people in the course and from Meredith and frankly, the online format where you get lessons over a period of weeks is far more effective as a student than going to a 2,3,4 day workshop. Because you have time in your studio to actually work. And, you know, when you go off to a conference or something, it's a lot of fun to be there in person, but you really don't get time to practice the way you do in a home course. So, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I highly recommend it and I hope you would enjoy, I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.
