A shaded path leads you to Monika’s workshop, a peaceful haven where fine fibers and Provence pigments intertwine. There, she weaves before your eyes. She shows you how to raise the warp, launch the shuttle, and transform a pale hank into brilliant thread using her natural dye recipes.
🌾 Fiber Introduction
The visit begins in the soft light of the workshop. Monika introduces you to the materials she works with: silk blended with Icelandic seaweed, linen, cotton, alpaca, or cashmere. She explains her choice of fibers, their respective qualities, their drape, their feel, and their response to color.
🧶 Weaving Demonstration
In front of the large wooden loom, she introduces you to the mechanics of weaving: how to set up a warp, adjust the tension, and choose a weave structure. She then sets up an in-progress piece for a full demonstration. The beat of the comb, the shuttle passing through, the patient rise of the weft... As the gestures repeat, you begin to grasp both the demands and the rhythmic beauty of this craft.
🎨 Natural Dye Workshop
Next comes the color-focused part. In a corner of the workshop or in the courtyard, Monika shows you how she dyes her own threads using natural pigments. Madder, indigo, cochineal, or walnut husks: depending on the season, she prepares a dye bath and guides you through each stage of the artisanal process. From preparing the fibers to mordanting, and then immersing the thread, you witness the slow transformation of a neutral material into a luminous thread that shifts in the light.
📦 Sharing & Keepsake
Throughout the experience, Monika shares anecdotes, technical explanations, and practical advice. You leave with a nuanced understanding of the weaver’s work: an art of patience, detail, and material. Depending on availability, a small dyed sample or a fragment of weaving may be offered as a keepsake.
A rare immersion in a living workshop, where the science of gesture meets the poetry of color.
🇫🇷 Monika can conduct the visit in French, English or German, according to your preference.
🇬🇧 Monika can conduct the visit in French, English or German, according to your preference.
🇩🇪 Monika can conduct the tour in French, English or German, as you wish.
Monika, +10 years of experience
Specialist in fine fibers and hand weaving
Originally from Germany and based in Seillans for many years, Monika weaves connections between fibers, colors, and people. Trained in hand weaving through the rigor of traditional craftsmanship, she develops in her workshop a personal textile language that is exacting and deeply sensitive.
Through her fabrics, she explores the meeting of natural materials — silk, linen, alpaca, cotton — and plant-based pigments she prepares herself, in tune with cycles, seasons, and nuances. Her creations combine precision of gesture and chromatic research, always driven by the desire to pass on her knowledge.
She welcomes visitors into a place that reflects her own image: open, precise, lived-in. A rare interlude, where one understands that weaving means listening, composing, connecting — an art of rhythm, sight, and hand.
The workshop is tucked away at garden level, sheltered from the bustle. Inside, everything speaks of thread: the wooden looms, the carefully arranged bobbins, the fibers hanging on the wall. Natural light caresses the materials, revealing the subtle nuances of the colors she composes herself. A place shaped by calm, rigor, and the poetry of gesture.
Seillans guide
Galleries, ateliers, art gardens and medieval lanes: find Valentia experiences gathered around Seillans and prepare your next discovery in the Pays de Fayence.
Cancellation policy:
Free cancellation if more than 48 hours before the experience starts. Between 48 and 24 hours before, 50% of the amount is due. Less than 24 hours before, cancellation is non-refundable.