Arpillera Patch-Working Workshop

Image: Eloïse Ptito-Echeverria, Hired and Fired (Quarantine Arpillera I). 

Originally from Montréal, Canada, Eloïse Ptito-Echeverria is a textile and apparel designer currently based in Amsterdam. Driven by intelligent print and ethical design, she possesses a particular penchant for textiles, embroidery, and colour. After completing her Fine Arts degree in 2011, she lived in Santiago, Chile for a year where she trained in Rococo hand- embroidery and Shibori. She also studied Precolumbian-Andina textiles at l’Universidad Catolica de Diseño. All of these experiences have collectively impacted her aesthetic vocabulary, resulting in a heavily art-based design ethos empowered with colour, the textile practices of her mixed heritage, and the emotional recycling of personal materials. Paying very little attention to current fads, her ultimate goal is to create soulful heirloom pieces that will be passed down from generation to generation.

Drawing from her Chilean roots, this masterclass, held on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 June, will be dedicated to the “Arpillera” patch-working process. Meaning “burlap” in Spanish, the Arpillera is traditionally a brightly-coloured, landscape patchwork picture that was most commonly crafted as a means of secret protest during the 1970s military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Arpilleras were often made in workshops and secretly distributed abroad through human rights groups, all while participants processed their own personal traumas and injustices through the art of picture patchwork-making.

This workshop will encourage participants to recycle their own personal and sacred materials that can then be made into their own “Arpillera”. In this workshop, the group will be processing the collective anxiety and grief universally felt during the complex year that was 2020 and create their own patchwork picture that will reflect this. Beginning with a brief presentation exploring the history of the “Arpillera” the workshop will explore how this traditional textile practice can be used to envision a better world or to simply process one’s current reality through the artistic up-cycling of one’s textile remnants. Very basic embroidery techniques will then be introduced to aid participants in creating their patchwork picture.

To find out more about the workshop and book tickets, visit the event page: Arpillera, Workshop with Eloïse Ptito-Echeverria