Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show 2021

Phew! Now all that Christmas malarkey is done and dusted, I can tell you more about my fabulous trip to the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show 2021.

The photo above is of Helen Birmingham’s Stitchbook Collective gallery Stand. I was honoured and delighted to have been a volunteer helper on the Stand.

The Kimono you can see was being raffled in aid of MIND, a mental health charity and raised over £2,000. The stands to the right of the kimono hold our Stitchbooks there were nearly 100 on display.

We, the members of the inaugural Stitchbook Collective, had started our textile books in 2019, little knowing how important they were to become to us during 2020. You can see details and a video of my book here.

As we neared the end of making our Stitchbooks, I put a message on our Facebook Page asking if there was anyone who would like to work collaboratively on more slow stitching pieces of textile art and 42 members of the Collective said yes! We are a closed group now.

Our aim is to make pieces of textile art to sell or raffle in aid of MIND and other local mental health charities. Our group is called Stitched Together

and Helen very generously invited us to have a table of our work on the stand.

I was there to chat to people about the Stitchbook Collective in general and how our group works in case anyone else was interested in setting up their own group.

That’s me in the face visor and the black T-shirt.

The Stand was very popular and very inspiring to a lot of people.

One of the absolute joys of the day was talking to students about the stitches and techniques. One school have especially asked GCSE students to visit the stand.

and these two girls spent a long time looking at the Stitched Together books and the rest of the stand.

It was such a wonderful event to be part of.

More to come in another post.

 

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Inspired by Japanese Boro

I am a member of The Stitchbook Collective

After our Stitchbooks were finished we had an opportunity to sign up for Year 2, in which we have been given supplies and video tutorials for more projects.

For one reason and another, my life has reduced the amount of crafty projects and blogging I have been doing over the last year or so. I have not been stitching as much as would have liked to.

However when this latest project arrived from Helen, all other things had to be put aside! A group project to use scraps of denim fabric and Boro-like stitching to create squares of simlar sizes, for Helen to stitch together into a wearable Kimon0 that will be raffled in aid of MIND, the mental health charity.

I love all things Japanese, and was lucky enough to go on a textile tour to Japan in 2015 We went to a museum with wonderful Boro displays and ever since I have wanted to create something looking like this, and now here was a fantastic opportunity.

I absolutely loved doing this stitching so free and relaxing.

Helen sent us the scraps of denim and some threads, but we could also include some of our own. On my trip to Japan I had been given this skein of reject weaving thread at a weaving house we visited. The thread had been dyed by the same process as in this post

I really enjoyed using some thread from Japan in this project, even though it is hard to detect, I know it is there.

I will certainly be buying a Raffle ticket when they go on sale in November.

We are all hoping that the Knitting and Stitching Show will go ahead this year and our Stichbooks and the Kimono will be on display.

Joining in with Kate and her Happy Scrappers for Scrap Happy Day.