Join us for Community Weekend, and learn hands-on creative photography skills in this three-hour workshop, guided by artist Hannah Doucet. Learn how to cut, sew, and stuff while crafting your own soft photo sculpture key chains or bag charms—no sewing experience needed.
Choose from provided photo options on the theme of nature or submit your own photo for a personalized touch!
Presented by MOCA in collaboration with Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, this workshop responds to Jeff Wall: Photography 1984–2023.
Whether you’re an emerging photographer, wanting to expand your practice, or simply looking for a fun afternoon in Toronto with friends, this workshop offers an opportunity to explore photography in an entirely new way!
Registration is required for this programme. Museum admission is included.
Customization
Customize your creation by submitting a photo to be printed! If you register by January 23rd you are invited to submit your own images to use for your soft sculpture. If you register after the deadline you will have a selection of preprinted images — related to the theme of nature — to choose from at the workshop. After signing up for this workshop, submit your chosen photograph by emailing it to learning@moca.ca before Jan 24. It will be printed on fabric and will be ready to be sewn the day of the workshop.
Image Submission Guidelines
Please make your digital file a maximum size of up to 12” by 12” for a square or circular image, or 12” by 20” for a rectangular image.
When picking what object to photograph, consider how complicated the outline of the shape is. A more rounded organic shape will be easier to sew and more effective for creating a hand sewn sculpture. A shape with lots of points or hard edges will be more complicated and have more potential gaps when sewn by hand.
When happy with your image, save the file as a .jpeg or .tiff and send it to learning@moca.ca by January 23rd, 2026.
Laying Out Your Design for Print
Use Photoshop or another editing tool to digitally cut out the image you want to print and remove the background. Make sure you have at least half an inch of digital canvas space around all sides of the photo of your object for our sewing seam allowance.
To make this three-dimensional sculpture, you’ll need a photo for both the front and back. To get this ready for printing on fabric you have two options:
Option 1: Duplicate your image and transform it using horizontal or vertical flip in tools to be the mirror image. The front and back of your image will be identical.
Option 2: If you want the front and back to be different photographs, place both photos onto your digital canvas. Then, ensure that the images are similarly shaped and are identical in size. For example, if you were making a hand and you wanted your sculpture to feature the front and back of the hand, one image would be the palm and the other the back of your hand. This option is trickier to sew as the two sides will not be perfectly symmetrical, if you are a beginner sewer pick option 1.
Need help with image formatting? Email learning@moca.ca for guidance and photo editing tips.
About the Artist
Hannah Doucet is an artist and arts educator from Winnipeg, based in Toronto. She works within photography, video, and sculpture to explore fantasy, illness, and the body. She has exhibited at venues including Gallery 44, The National Gallery of Canada, PLATFORM, Arsenal Contemporary Art and The New Gallery. Doucet won the inaugural PLATFORM Photography Award and was a recipient of the National Gallery of Canada’s New Generation Photography award in 2023.
Doucet attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Summer 2024. She is one of four founders of Blinkers (now titled C’CAP), a gallery in Winnipeg, where she was a co-director until August 2021. She has over 14 years of experience working within community arts and arts education as a program manager, coordinator and artist facilitator in schools, community centers, shelters, hospitals, universities, art galleries and museums.
About Gallery 44
Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography is an artist-run centre committed to supporting diverse approaches to photographic and image-based practices through exhibitions, education programs and facilitating artistic production. Gallery 44 provides space and context for meaningful dialogue between artists and public. Together, we offer an entry point to explore the artistic, cultural, historic, social and political implications of the image in our ever-expanding visual world.
February Community Weekend Schedule
Friday, February 6
5–9 pm: Free Friday Night
Saturday, February 7
12 pm and 2 pm: Drop-in Tours
1–4 pm: Artist-led Workshop*
*There is a fee of $80 per person. General Admission to the museum is included. MOCA Members at the Individual level and above are eligible for workshop discounts.
Sunday, January 4
10 am–5 pm: Free Museum Admission
10 am–3 pm: TD Community Sunday Workshop
