Surface Design Workshops: Textile Printing, Embroidery, Weaving & Fiber Art Classes at Aya Fiber Studio
What happens when you step just beyond the surface of your practice—not to leave it behind, but to see it more clearly?
At Aya Fiber Studio, a new season of surface design workshops invites artists to expand their visual vocabulary through textile printing, embroidery, weaving, and mixed media fiber techniques. These workshops are open to painters, printmakers, designers, and curious makers at all levels—no prior fiber experience required.
This season features master artist instructors whose practices bridge contemporary art and textile traditions, offering hands-on learning grounded in process, material, and experimentation.
What Is Surface Design?
Surface design is the transformation of a material—fabric, paper, or mixed media—through pattern, texture, color, and mark-making. It moves beyond decoration and into construction, where surfaces are layered, stitched, printed, and built over time.
Light and Lacey- Mixed Media Fiber Art Collage with Valerie Goodwin
Wed, Apr 21, 2027 – Fri, Apr 23, 2027
In these textile art workshops, artists explore:
Pattern as repetition, rhythm, and variation
Stitch as line, gesture, and accumulation
Color as absorption, layering, and interaction
Structure as composition through weaving and grids
Surface design becomes not just a skill set, but a way of thinking—one that translates across disciplines.
Workshops with Master Artist Instructors
Textile Printing & Pattern Design Workshops
Pattern begins with a mark—repeated, shifted, and transformed. Through block printing, resist dyeing, and experimental textile techniques, artists explore how rhythm emerges across a surface.
Guided by Kerr Grabowski, Kevin Womack, Cheryl Rezendes, and Jeanne Brady, these workshops reveal how variation lives within repetition.
Embroidery & Stitch as Mark-Making
A stitched line carries time. It cannot be erased—it accumulates.
In these embroidery workshops, stitching becomes drawing. Artists explore mark-making with thread, working with line, density, and gesture in a tactile, time-based way.
Led by Judy Coates Perez, Lisa Binkley, and Atsuko Chirikjian, participants discover how fiber art techniques can transform their approach to drawing and surface.
Fabric Collage & Mixed Media Textile Art
A surface is built through layers—cloth, fragments, and stitch coming together over time.
These mixed media textile workshops focus on:
Fabric collage and layering
Combining textiles with found materials
Stitch as structure and composition
With Valerie Goodwin, artists explore how textile layering and surface design can create depth, narrative, and abstraction.
Weaving Workshops & Structural Pattern
Before the image, there is structure. Before the surface, there is the grid.
In these weaving workshops, artists learn how pattern emerges through warp and weft, repetition, and tension. Structure becomes a generative tool for composition.
Guided by Atsuko Chirikjian, Jiyoung Chung, Claudia Lee, and Daniel Essig, these sessions open new ways of thinking about pattern and form.
A Deeper Layer: Japanese Textile Traditions
Running through many of these workshops is the quiet influence of Japanese textile practices, which bring a philosophy of slowness, repetition, and material awareness.
Close-up of hands wearing blue protective gloves lifting dark indigo-dyed fabric from a dye vat. The wet textile drips with dye, showing deep blue-black tones as it oxidizes, capturing the hands-on process of traditional indigo dyeing in a fiber art workshop.
Techniques such as:
Shibori (resist dyeing)
Katazome (stencil resist printing)
Sashiko (repetitive stitching)
Boro (layered and repaired textiles)
offer new ways to think about:
Pattern through resistance and chance
Stitch as both function and expression
Surface as history, layering, and time
These approaches deepen the practice of surface design and textile art, inviting artists to slow down and work with intention.
Why Take Surface Design Workshops?
These fiber art classes and textile workshops are not about changing your medium—they are about expanding it.
Artists often return to their primary practices with:
A deeper understanding of texture and surface
New approaches to pattern and composition
Greater sensitivity to color relationships
A renewed connection to process and material
Whether you are exploring surface design for the first time or deepening an existing practice, these workshops offer space to experiment, reflect, and grow.
Register for Surface Design Workshops at Aya Fiber Studio
This is an invitation to move beyond the flat surface—
to build it, layer it, and transform it.
Join a community of artists exploring textile art, fiber techniques, and surface design through hands-on workshops and shared inquiry.
Registration for the new workshop season is now open.
Come as you are.
Come curious.
Come ready to discover what your work can become.
