One year on

A year on. Meetings, draft proposals, final proposals, budgets. A search for partners. In Hampton Court, we made important connections - with the Royal School of Needlework.... and we've just heard that our application to the Heritage Lottery Fund was successful.

The embroidery trail

Still no progress on funding... but I visit central Spain with a great friend, Marcy Frosh. We stay in Oropesa de Toledo and we walk a couple of kilometres in the burning heat to a neighbouring village, Lagartera.
Famous for its embroidery.

The designs are geometric, a legacy of Moorish rulers many centuries previously.
We both sense that the project - showing through embroidery how cultures intertwine - has so much potential.

First steps -patterns and place

How did it start? In Willesden Green, during the British Sari Story exhibition. Had a coffee with Matt Stringer, Wandsworth Council's Senior Arts Officer. We'd been creating patterns for the sari in the British Sari Story - why not think about Islamic patterns on traditional clothing? Matt suggested. Particularly the hijab. Why? To work with Muslim and non-Muslim women to increase understanding of different traditions of Islam through a common interest - embroidery.
The next step - as always - was the quest for funding. But such had been the interest in the British Sari Story, that we were sure that the idea of looking further at pattern, place and heritage would strike chords somewhere.
Above - Rahiet Ashfaq of Fife with her Sari for Scotland, reflecting the traditional damask patterns of her native town, given a contemporary twist in her sari.