Final session at Trillington House

Saba Hammad joined us and brought beautiful handstitched saris and shawls, embroidered and bought in Pakistan.

A call for keen embroiderers....

Exciting news... Amit Rastogi of sari retailer RCKC (who produced the winning British Sari Story saris last year and will also have this year's winning entries made up) is keen to have a catwalk collection designed by one of his designers embroidered here in the UK. So ... we are sending out a call for keen embroiderers who might like to become involved. If you feel that you could come on board please do get in touch (please email info@bridging-arts.com). Initially it would just be a question of getting some examples to your work to Amit (who will be based at RCKC in Wembley this month) so he can see. Then we'll get a team together.  We don't anticipate a huge amount of work - this will just be for sample garments for the catwalk show.
Amit would like to start on this as soon as possible.
This is really an exciting development. Currently the vast majority of embellishment and beading for London catwalk shows is done in south Asia. We're keen tostart to change this. This first idea is a small move that could be important. This new collection will be designed by an Indian designer but embroidered by a British team....

The order of the fish

Just to recap what fired the discussion about cooking in our embroidery classes....
Our own fish embroidery, a kantha (quilt) from Bangladesh has been loaned by Ferdous Rahman, of Restart 50+. These quilts are traditionally made by stitching layers of fabric together, sometimes old saris.













The fish motifs on the quilt inspired many of the embroiderers - At other classes, we also asked participants to bring in embroidery from home that they cherished.
It also inspired Hannah Walker who designed a fish motif for our sewing pack. At the classes, she pointed out that the fish is a Christian symbol, but is also widely used in the Islamic world... Pictured - a fish banner of the Mughal emperors. Each of the sewing packs has a theme for discussion. Naturally the fish motif prompted talk about cooking and recipes. To follow: more recipes contributed by participants.