Mending, embroidery & polymer clay with Astrid

An Austrian artist who has lived in Berlin since 2014 — art school in Linz, a degree in German at Graz, and most of what she teaches taught to herself, in order to run a sustainability workshop for a school in Potsdam. Her courses are about keeping clothes rather than replacing them. Over two days you learn darning, sashiko, doodle-stitching, hemming and buttons, then spend the second day putting them to work on the garments you brought, and leave with a handout so you can do it again at home. Shorter sessions add hand embroidery to a favourite piece, or turn a hole into a patch worth showing off. She also models 5–7 cm figurines in polymer clay, built up from the skeleton and painted at the end. Beginners throughout, in German or English, and she teaches the techniques that survive everyday use rather than the textbook ones.