Cochenille Design Retreat

Every year Cochenille Design Studio and Susan Lazear host a Design retreat. This year we will be back at the Carlsbad Inn Beach Resort, wonderful place. They gave us a room rate that is almost half there usual rate.



It will be September 10th to the 12th, 2010, If you have the weekend free and will need to relax after getting the school year started again. Join Us!

Day 1 Field Trip: San Diego Area Friday, Sept. 10th
Meet at 9:30 a.m. This day will involve exploring various studios, galleries and shops to get inspiration, and to pick up goodies (if you desire) to use in your projects. We will visit an assortment of the following: • Wearable Artist Studios• Fabric and Trim stores • Yarn Store(s) • Other related and inspiring venues

We did this 4 years ago and it was great, there were about 15 ladies and we visited so many local artist and great Art places in San Diego, that I didn't even know we had in the area! I look forward to driving around town with a good group of ladies.

Day 2 Accessory Design Susan Lazear Saturday, Sept. 11th
On this day, you will learn some of the basics of designing accessory items. In the a.m., Susan will show you how to draft patterns by hand or by computer (using Garment Designer) for purses, totes, hats, non-traditional scarves etc. She will also teach you the art of draping a contoured belt on a body. After lunch, students will choose one or two accessory items, and create patterns for these to use the following day.

Susan Lazear is a Professor of Fashion at Mesa College in San Diego. She teaches fashion courses in- cluding Patternmaking, Draping, and Textiles. Susan designs wearable art, and is a computer graphic artist. In addition to her teaching she writes books and articles for creative audiences. She combines her skills in the development of a line of software for the textile arts, developed under the Cochenille Design Studio name.

I learned a lot of what I know from her wonderful classes at San Diego Mesa College. You do not need to be an expert and because Susan is teaching Design principles you can apply them to either sewing or knitting. You don't have to own our software everything she does on the computer you will show you how to do it by hand. Plus you don't have to be an expert all projects will be step by step from start to finish!

Day 3 Construct and Embellish Linda Medina Sunday, Sept. 12th
Linda Medina will teach you various methods of constructing and embel- lishing (whether knit or sewn) accessory items. You will be exposed to a variety of techniques, and may choose which ones to incorporate into your project. In addition, you will be encouraged to make samples of multiple techniques so that you can later pull from them to develop further projects.

Linda Medina is an artist and designer. She has made custom and one-of-a-kind clothing and accessories for many years,and teaches needlework, sewing and knitting. Her knitwear designs have been in all of the major knitting magazines and many books. She introduced a line of knit and crochet patterns under “Medina Originals” in 2009 and plans to add cross stitch and nee- dlepoint designs in 2010. Linda’s work is included in the International Friendship Tapestry in Iceland, private collections, and is in the permanent collection of the White House.

These two wonderful ladies are ready and willing to show you how to make some wonderful accessories and how to make them stand out.

I'm the Admin to all of this - so if you have any questions or you want to Register or just would like more information. Call me: Sonia 858-259-1698 Mon - Thurs 9:30 to 4 PST.

Past Retreat Post

DVD Inspirations CD

Cochenille Design Studio has new product. Susan Lazear has created released a set of Inspiration DVD's.

Susan is a great photographer and she's been able to travel to do Fashion centered Destinations. She has compiled images from different trips that she has used in powerpoint presentations at different classes and lectures at Tradeshows all over the country and it was suggested and she decided to put them together as a product - and Voila - The best Inspiration DVD's I've seen.

The Europe Fall/Winter Windows 2008/2009 is collection of over 300 images of fashion windows from Verona and Venice Italy, and The Swarovski Museum in Austria. Sure to get your creative juices flowing!

This DVD contains two folders, one with graphic JPG images (large and small versions of the files) and one with slideshows. To view the slideshows you will need Quicktime 7 - which can be downloaded for free at Apple's website.
The images and slideshows are divided into three main areas:
VERONA: which includes images broken down into three categories; knit & crochet, sewn, and mixed media.
VENICE: which includes images together of garments, both sewn, knit and crochet.
SWAROVSKI: which features garments and related shot at the Swarovski Museum in Wattens, Triol, Austria.



The Europe Summer/Fall Windows 2008 DVD is a collection of over 350 images of fashion windows from Paris, Verona, Venice, Florence and parts of Tuscany, Italy.

This DVD contains two folders, one with graphic JPG images (large and small versions of the files) and one with slideshows. To view the slideshows you will need Quicktime 7 - which can be downloaded for free at Apple's website.
The images and slideshows are divided into areas as follows:
PARIS: which includes images broken down into three categories; knit & crochet, sewn, and the city.
VERONA: which includes images broken down into three categories; knit & crochet, sewn, and the city.
VENICE: which includes images broken down into three categories; knit & crochet, sewn, and the city.
FLORENCE: which focuses more on garments by designer.
TUSCANY: which features clothing from smaller cities and countryside markets.



They are $25 each but there is currently a special promo code on the website and you can buy them 2 for $40.

Off go the Aussies & Student Work from Jenny Dowde's Workshop

Here is the Student work from Sunday's Embelish workshop:







Monday morning (Sept 22) it was the first day in about a year that I wasn't awake at 6 AM. I opened my eyes, and was amazed it was 8 AM. The only task to accomplish for the day was to get my new Aussie friends to there hotel in San Diego.

You would think that would be an easy uneventful day. It wasn't. Susan had research a Japaneese book store in Kearny Mesa they wanted to stop by. Well I must have been brain dead because I left the house without writing either the name of the place or the address, I looked at the map Susan brought up on a Yahoo search. I recognized the area so I didn't think I needed more direction. Well we drove in circles and never found it.

There hotel was on Hotel Circle North. So I figure we would get on the 8 freeway and drive it until we saw the hotel from the freeway then we wouldn't have to drive the entire stretch of hotel circle. We never saw the hotel. So I was driving them in circles again. I think Sue was sea sick by this time. I come back on the 8 get off at hotel circle and the exit ramp runs us straight into there hotel.

So much for thinking. Next time I just won't think and just do it.

Back to work!

Cochenille Design Retreat - Jenny Dowde Workshop

Sunday the 21st. It was Jenny's day for her all day workshop. "On the surface: Embellish it..." Oh boy did they Embellish.


Jenny Dowde has a book out called 'Surface Works' the ladies got to see the author demostrate a wide variety of these technique's step by step. All free-form, go with the flow, a bead here a bead there, a bead tassle here and there, a small bead, big bead, a bugle bead. It was great.



Then she showed them what they could do with emboidery floss, fancy yarns, cording, and anything else you can get thru the eye of a needle. And off they went back to there work area and created.

And then came the fancy tools, Felting brush and needles. Oh the colors, shapes, and images they created. It was wonderful.

Cochenille Design Retreat - Susan Lazear workshop

Saturday the 20th, I slept good and woke up. I realized were I was. The Ocean, it's there. It wasn't there yesterday. (well I'm sure it was, but I didn't see it)



We were at the beatiful Carlsbad INN in Carlsbad, CA. It was amazing.

Susan has always been a great motivator. Makes you feel like you can do anything. She always starts her classes with a Creative exersice. On Saturday she seperated the group into 3 smaller groups, and asked them to spell out a word with there bodies. (I don't remember if she said 'creative' word)They came up with some interesting body shapes.



Susan Lazear taught her all day workshop. "On the Surface: Color it. . " and color it they did.



They did iron transfer's, created stamps with potatoes, linolium, leaves, and anything else that had a raised surface. They tie-dyed, and stenciled. Susan also taught a really cool marbling techinque with the jacquard inks, and shaving cream.





I think everyone one was happy, glad to be there and most of all inspired. Thank you ladies!!!

Cochenille Design Retreat - Registration

So On Thursday the 18th, I'm up at 3:00 AM and back to San Diego. (Life would be so much easier if we could afford to live there).

We had our Garment Designer workshop on Thursday. It went well, everyone enjoyed themselves. I hope! I was on Auto Pilot for Thursday and Friday.

I do recall getting to meet our guest teacher Jenny Dowde and her friend Sue, from Australia. I arrived at Susan's at 7AM. Everyone was still sleeping when I ran the door bell. So I woke them up. Up Up, time to get working. Susan and I started working we still had stuff to get ready and organized. I was up the stairs, down the stairs, in the garage making copies. Then I walk in to the kitchen for something, and there they are sitting outside at the table having moring tea. I felt like a dork, I didn't know which was which. I knew there names but I hadn't gone looking for picture's on the internet of Jenny. Which would have been better preparation, that way I would have known who she was.

Or I could just stop being a Red Neck, and learn how to introduce myself. I reach out my hand and tell them my name and then they reach out there hand and tell me there name. Dah!

Friday was also a blur. I got everyone registered. Got there handouts, and there supplies. Jenny did a Powerpoint presentation I do recall seeing so really cool paintings, from her early Painting years. Then off I go to get lunch. Got everything set up and passed out. Then I sat behind my table and turned into a zombie, during Susan's Italy Trends Report, and her Creative Exercise afternoon class.