Making Zen online slow stitching retreat is back for 2025!
Imagine a whole week filled with creative making, new techniques, craft projects, and connections with others who love what you love. Creating time in our schedules to slow down, to immerse ourselves in the good and necessary work of connecting head, heart, and hands.
This is Making Zen online retreat! And it’s totally free to join in.
This year 32 artists and educators are joining together to bring something truly delightful and super special. It really is the not-to-be-missed online gathering. I wait eager for it each year; and am so honoured to be included in the teachers sharing works with you to make.
The brain-child of Kate from Zen Stitching, the Making Zen online retreat is like nothing else online. It’s totally free for you to learn from internationally known and loved artists, creative-makers, educators and people who all just get the same things.
It’s about gifting ourselves the necessary time needed to nourish our quiet selves, our creative work, and our community connections.
The retreat is held online, which means you can gather from wherever you are in the world. Show up in your pyjamas (if you’d like) with all your creative supplies beside you.
For one week you get access to ALL the content. Each 24 hours about 6 or so new courses become available for you to watch. You can login wherever you are, and easily access on your desktop or device. You’ll receive the schedule of what courses are available before the retreat begins, so you can gather your supplies, plan your evenings or morning creative sessions. Take the whole day to just make make make!
This year I’m teaching how to make a felt and silk roll-up keepsake pouch. It’s naturally dyed (I show coreopsis and eucalyptus options for this), and a satisfying make. I know you’re going to love it. I’ve made so many from one piece of wool felt and my collections of silk scraps.
There are 32 amazing artists you’ll learn from, sharing embroidery, natural dye, slow stitching, felting, zero-waste sewing, Sashiko, appliqué, and even creating your own oracle cards.
You can see the whole list of Making Zen artists here, and discover all the presentations and projects they’re offering. Many I know you’ll already love (and probably have learnt from them in previous Making Zen retreats), and some are new-to-me, which is always exciting.
I’m especially excited to make Selina Ben’s Scrap Puzzle Pouch, Rebecca Desnos’s eco-printed paper, Margeaux Davis’ 3d Mushroom, and Saima Kaur’s Phulkaris stitching. But I know I’ll dip in and try more, because that’s the beauty of having so many wonderful things to chose from.
Making Zen online retreat is on 26th-30th May 2025. Free craft, creative, textile, slow stitching workshops and techniques.
While Making Zen is completely free to join in for the week, you do only get access to each workshop for 24-hours. I know for many of you, that is enough. And I’m so glad there is this opportunity to have access to so many quality courses and techniques for free.
But if you think you need more time to delve into the courses, then you can upgrade to the Making Zen online retreat VIP pass. This gives you life-time access to all the courses, as well as a whole heap of bonuses, including access to Kate Ward’s Zen Stitching Sashiko membership. And you get early access to all the content, before the retreat officially begins. It’s all worth over $3000 dollars.
The early bird pricing for the online retreat is available until 26th May, when the week-long slow stitching and crafting retreat kicks off. It’s $97 for everything - 32 different teachers, presentations, workshops, techniques. A stack of bonuses, 30 days access to Sashiko Stitch Club membership, a private podcast, the Making Zen ebook.
These are the projects that I’ve shared in previous years. You can purchase them as stand-alone courses through my website. Zippered pouch, Spiderweb cushion, Treasure Drawstring pouch. Each of these is a special project that I still love coming back to today, even years after first making them.
*if you upgrade to Making Zen online retreat using my unique code then I receive a small commission. This helps to pay for my course contribution to the retreat. You know that I only ever share things that I love and use myself. And Making Zen is exactly all the things I love best!
