Members Squares

This is a page from The Stitchbook (Issue 14). We were looking at an absolutely inspirational project by

Dutch artist, Jolande Van Luijk.

This project became key to the direction our own project took. I spent a lot of time turning ideas about this project over and over in my mind. It was very important to me that members' suggestions were taken into account, but also that I came up with a design which had enough individual elements for ALL members to be able to make a significant contribution.

I looked back at pieces of work which we had undertaken both as a group and in our monthly workshops, and tried to take elements and techniques from all of them, hopefully combining them into one coherent design which we would all be proud to take ownership of.

I love the idea of making ‘wearable art’ and was reminded of the amazing RED DRESS project. If you haven’t come across it yet, take a look at the project website: https://reddressembroidery.com/

So, coupling the Red Dress project with The Circles of Life project, together with the narrative which we had already established and the mindful nature of slow stitching, I came up with a design which I felt fully committed to, and which I was ready to present to our members.

Thankfully, everyone was behind it. So ... FULL STEAM AHEAD. The first phase of the project was to make the needlefelted and stitched squares to form the structure of the dress. Each square needed to be created using the same process, (and end up approximately the same size), but it was important that there was enough freedom within the design for members to be able to feel connected to their own pieces of work. The intention of placing a black dot on each square, was to represent the fingerprint of the person who created it.

These are the instructions which were provided with the kits, and an online video of the process was also available on our members only website, and some images of the kits in production. Once the kits had been distributed, and a deadline set for their return, it was a case of waiting and seeing what came back!! (More of that in the next BLOG instalment!)