Outside In Opening Night

The Finished Quilt hanging in Tullie House

Friday was the opening might of the exhibition Outside In: Northwest  at Tullie House and we went along to show our support, see some fantastic art work and catch up with some friends. The exhibition is well worth a visit, the quality of work is outstanding and the variety is truly inspiring. Included in the exhibition is work by participants in the Stitching Friendships project, so another reason to go and see it!

Details

Detail

We also went along on Friday night to see the completed quilt on display at Tullie House; after all the hard work that has gone into making the piece it was so exciting to see it hanging up and we had lots of lovely comments about the work. There were lots of people there who had taken part in the project and everyone said how pleased they were with the finished piece. 

Read all about it!

Letter detail

Piecing it all together

The completed panel (almost, still needs backing!)

I have mostly spent my weekend stitching, I have arranged and stitched all the patches for the second quilt panel, and in the process have done over 7.5 m of whip stitch. I can't wait to put it together with the other panels and see how the whole thing looks.

First I stitched the strips together

Stitching

Detail of finished seam

I've been so impressed and inspired by the work produced during this project. People have really put a lot of time. thought and effort into the work and I think it shows. From people who have never picked up a needle to people who have been stitching for years everyone has come together to make something very special.

Panel detail

Patch detail, machine embroidery

Patch detail, applique and hand embroidery

Patch detail, applique and hand embroidery with buttons

Detail of the back

The back of the panel

Some of the needles that suffered in the making of this piece

Coming Together

Stitching the patches together

Today was our last day at Tullie House and we have all our patches completed and even have a good few of them sewn together. We've had a great week working with everyone and some beautiful work has been produced. Everyone at Tullie House has been really friendly and helpful which has made the week extra enjoyable. Helen and I are looking forward to getting everything sewn up and ready to be installed in the atrium of Tullie House next week.

Spelling it out

Learning new stitches

A very big thank you to the guys from Unity who have been down to help us everyday and made a huge contribution to the quilt. Thank you also to Botcherby Community Centre craft group who made some lovely patches for the quilt as did The Prince's Trust group and the guys from the Creative Wellbeing workshops down at the Shaddongate Resource Centre, run by the YMCA. It's really exciting starting to put the patches together and  beginning to get an idea of how the quilt will look.

Definitely our youngest contributor

Very proud of his work, and rightly so!

Patching things up

Spelling it out

Exciting times, today we started sewing together some of the fantastic patches that have been made so far. By the end of play today we had the three strips that make up one of the quilt panels almost all sewn up, which is pretty good going.

Stitching the strips of patches

As you can see from the top picture we are progressing well with our letter patches, which will spell out the name of the project; stitching friendship. Just a few more letters to go!

Hard at work with the letter (and the drink) 't'

Letter detail

Working on the 's'

True to form there was also much chatting and tea drinking as well as some serious stitch business. We even managed to lure one of the Tullie House staff team in to help us reach our target of 80 patches.

Yesterday I taught Helen T how to make Dorset wheel buttons so today we made a few more of those too, just because they're pretty!

Helen and the long thread

The finished button

The finished buttons

More Pictures

I thought you might all like to see some more pictures of some of the lovely patches completed so far.

The quilting continues...

We've had a busy couple of days down at Tullie House, it's been great to see the guys from Unity who have come down and joined in. There has been much stitching, much chatting and a fair amount of tea drinking. What could be better?

Letter patch

Peace star

We're well on the way to meeting our target of 80 patches, especially as this afternoon I picked up some beautiful patches from the Craft Group at Botcherby Community Centre. Tomorrow we start putting it all together, exciting times!

All balanced

One of the community groups who've been working with us

Busy stitching

And beading

And knotting!

Stitching it all together

All this week Stitching Friendships is at Tullie House in the community room. We are putting together all the fantastic patches that people have made, as well as creating a few more, to complete our community quilt. If you'd like to come down and join us and have a chat, see what we've been up to and maybe add a few stitches yourself we'd love to see you. You don't need any stitching experience and it's all free! When we've finished the quilt it's going to hang in the Tullie House atrium which is rather exciting so come on down and add your stitches to our community.

Important stitching equipment; fabric, hoop, tea...

Preparing

Stitching

More stitching

Machine stitching