Punk smocking is textile manipulation through extemporary stitching that covers damage while reshaping and enhancing almost any garment. The name combines the 1970s counterculture movement with the geometrical dimensional technique seen on shepherds’ smocks from the eighteenth century, aesthetic dress in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth, and little girls’ party dresses to this day. As with many styles and modes of visible mending, punk smocking also draws inspiration from Bengali/Bangladeshi kantha, and from bold and extreme art stitchers, including Maggie Gill, Judith Scott, Arthur Bispo do Rosario, and Dunya Hirschter Koprolčec. An important influence on this technique, which alters form as much as it embellishes surface, is stitchwork from the Nui Project at Shobu Gakuen, Kagoshima, Japan, where neurodivergent residents embroider freely and intensively, taking a year or more to complete a piece. Indeed, as participants in this workshop will discover, the contentment fostered by this addictive, unplanned fusion of self, cloth, needle and thread is a profound form of menditation. Under Kate’s guidance, students will learn various techniques of punk smocking, leaving with the tools to continue their journey in radical wardrobe intervention. DateSunday, September 13th, 2026 Time2:00-5:00 pm ET LocationTatter Textile Library: 505 Carroll Street, #2B, Brooklyn, NY 11215 Cost$100 Class Materials All materials will be provided.
