Stitched Memories: A Mother’s Day Bookmaking Workshop

“Memory is not only something we remember—it is something we can make, stitch, and preserve together.”

Join artists Diana Larrea and Kiki Chrinos for a special one-day workshop that invites mothers and their daughters or sons to reconnect through a shared creative process. Using personal photographs from family archives, participants will explore simple embroidery techniques to transform their images and reflect on the memories they hold.

Together, each pair will create a small handmade book using a Japanese stab-binding technique, turning their photographs into a tactile narrative. Designed as a meaningful way to celebrate Mother’s Day, the workshop offers a space to slow down, share stories, and create something lasting together.

Workshop Breakdown

10 – 11 a.m. | Introduction & Image Selection

• Overview of the workshop, materials, and process
• Participants will select 5–6 personal photographs from their family archives (digital copies will be printed on site)
• Demonstration on how to safely handle and prepare photographs for stitching
• Introduction to basic embroidery techniques on paper

11 a.m. – 1 p.m. | Embroidery on Photographs

• Guided embroidery session using simple stitches to enhance and transform images
• Explore ways to highlight details, add symbolic elements, and personalize each photograph
• Support with composition and sequencing to begin shaping a visual narrative

1 – 1:30 p.m. | Lunch Break

• Participants are welcome to bring their own lunch

1:30 – 3 p.m. | Bookbinding & Assembly

• Introduction to Japanese stab-binding techniques
• Assemble embroidered photographs into a small handmade artist book
• Guidance on page order, layout, and final presentation

About the instructors: 

Diana Larrea is a Peruvian documentary filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist based between Miami and Cusco. Her work explores migration, memory, and identity through film, photography, and installation. She is a 2025 South Florida Cultural Consortium grantee and a 2024–25 resident artist at Oolite Arts.

Her ongoing project, I Left Too Soon, looks at themes of migration, identity, and absence through family archives, video, photography, and embroidery. The project has been presented in various installation formats at Oolite Arts, the Baker—Hall Gallery, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in North Miami. She is currently working on a passport-shaped artist’s book inspired by this work.

She holds an Associate’s degree in Film Production from Miami-Dade College and began her career as a TV and documentary editor.

Carmen (Kiki) Chirinos Benavides (Peru, 1956) is an educator and textile artist focused on preserving pre-Hispanic Peruvian traditions. She trained as an early childhood educator in 1977 and later, in 2009, as a travel agent in Peru’s receptive tourism sector.

Beginning in 2015, she has studied backstrap loom weaving, natural dyeing, and artisanal bookbinding at cultural institutions in Lima, along with photo-embroidery.

Since 2018, she has created replicas of pre-Hispanic textiles at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the National University of San Marcos, using traditional cotton fibers, iconography, and ancestral color palettes.

Her work has been presented at major cultural events and institutions, including the 2019 Pan American Games (Culturaymi), the Lima Art Museum (MALI), and exhibitions focused on Peru’s ancestral memory.