Bead Embroidery Workshop | Winter
Visual Arts | Available
Come spend creative time with artist San Fortune for a hands-on bead embroidery workshop! Together, we’ll craft a tiny beaded masterpiece—either 1.5” or 2” square—that you can frame and proudly hang on your wall at home.
We’ll provide all the materials you need, but we’d love for you to bring a little piece of yourself to the project. Whether it’s a stray bit of costume jewelry (like the fish in San’s piece), a favorite vintage button, or a small trinket that holds a special memory, we’ll help you stitch it into your design.
San will guide you through the essentials, teaching you the four-bead backstitch, stop stitch, and picot stitch. Come explore this beautiful craft with San—be warned, though: it might just become your new favorite obsession, just like it did for her!
San Fortune
San Fortune has been passionate about jewelry for as long as she can remember. Working for a fine estate jewelry store to help pay for a college degree introduced her to a wide range of historical styles. Throughout most of her career as a graphic designer, art director, web designer, and creative director, she has enjoyed seeking out vintage and antique jewelry and also making beaded jewelry. In 2013, everything changed: a friend introduced her to beginning bead embroidery techniques, and she was instantly captivated…enthralled…entranced. Her previously parallel paths in design and jewelry joined together with surprising power, and she dived into the art and design of bead embroidery headfirst. The exquisite intricacy of the design is as compelling to her as the meticulous process of creating the objects themselves. She is a member of the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes. Her work can be found at West End Gallery on Market Street and by commission.