Craft more than crochet

Interesting piece in the Guardian - thank you, Katrina, for pointing this out!
More and more people are turning to knitting, crocheting, needlework etc ... Libby Brooks argues that the trend is spurred by "a visceral, and socially urgent, need to reconfigure the nature of work". Craft more than crochet article here.

Tea party on Uxbridge Road

Our first event at Trillington House, Uxbridge Road. This is sheltered accommodation run by Notting Hill Housing (a major London housing trust). We have been hoping for some time to work on embroidery with groups of elderly people in residential homes, and at last we have the chance. It is an icy morning but everyone is in good spirits. We are very fortunate to have Rosa Martyn from the Royal School of Needlework (RSN) to demonstrate some stitches.  And of course Bridging Arts workshop assistant Katherine Eves and volunteer Katrina Williams, who has been a mainstay of the project from the start.

Katherine Eves talking about her new embroidered book, about her Uncle.

Andrew, telling the group his story

Rosa from the Royal School of Needlework, demonstrating crewelwork (embroidery with wool). She is embroidery a Christmas present for her grandmother.

 

 

 

 

 

A break halfway through.

Katherine Eves, an illustration graduate who has cast aside her drawing pen for the needle, shows her latest embroidered book. I show the dress embroidered for me by my mother, for my first birthday. This is a work of art, with a fringe of flowers from Cornwall (where I grew up) around the hem.

 Inspired, Norma and Sylvia go upstairs to fetch some of their own collections.

A needlepoint picture owned by Norma

Tania's crochet

Scenes from recent classes

Scenes from the most recent classes at the Asian Women's Resource Centre, Harlesden...

Detail from embroidery brought in by Khalima

Everyone hard at work

And the full picture.

Crochet brought in by Daxa

Budapest and crochet

No escaping the bleak legacy of Communist tradition in Hungary. It echoes on. You feel it in the metro and as you fly in over the concrete (Soviet era) tower blocks fringing Budapest.
But the architecture and ornament in much of the old part of the city more than compensate. Embroidery on the altars of St Stephen's Basilica.

There is a lot of embroidery in the shops (for tourists). But more interesting is the randomly encountered embroidery and work that's not for sale. For example, the crochet under the linen tablecloth in a magically neo Renaissance restaurant (very much later).

And more pattern, more redolent of contemporary Budapest, on a phone box spotted on the way home.

Learning how to crochet

At the Battersea class someone commented on my daughter's perserverance in learning to crochet. She worked it all out from an old embroidery book we found at a church book sale last summer. It was hard (initially) to find the right size hooks etc. But she kept trying. Pictures speak louder than words. And it's her 21st birthday today - so I thought I would say well done and happy birthday dear Josie! If anyone else has photos or news of an unusual sewing or embroidery project, please let me know and I will put them up on the blog.
After her birthday lunch in Manchester, wander around the Christmas market. There is a talking reindeer…












And a party feeling, even inside the Town Hall … where the extraordinary arches and corridors are reminiscent of looped stitches and skeins of thread. In the back of my mind, am sure there is another historic link, too, with all the work we’ve been doing in Stitch. But will have to go home and read Pevsner to find out just what that is.