The Just Sew Stories Exhibition at The Rooftop Arts Centre April 2019

This was a lovely opportunity for people to see each others completed work, read their stories and to share the work with the wider community.

Poster and previous photos by Warren Shaw - The Rooftop Arts centre

A premature birth with a happy ending

Sharing a love of books with her Grandchildeen

The 13 sequins represent 13 children

Inspired to read by J K Rowling and sharing this love of reading and all things harry Potter with children learning to read in a local school

This maker was The Cat Who Walked by herself at school.

"The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild—as wild as wild could be—and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him."

“This, O my Best Beloved is a story – a new and wonderful story – a story quite different from the other stories”― Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories

This story was dedicated to Gertrude Jekyll

Remembering the strong women in her 

family and life in Jarrow and Corby

The tale od three sisters - Evacuees from Birmingham

Sharing the space, enjoying the show.

This project was devised and delivered by The Eloquent Fold, artists Carole Miles and Phiona Richards with funding from Northamptonshire Community Foundation - The Constance Travis Endowment Fund. Many thanks to Swan Gardens for welcoming the group into their warm and inviting social spaces and to all the wonderful people at The Rooftop Arts centre who who helped to hang and publicise the show.

PROCESSIONS - Week 3 - Blooming Marvellous!

My whippet Logan investigating Common Dog Violets growing wild under trees on our morning walk. I had been thinking about the Suffragette colours and the type of flowers we could sew onto our Made in Corby PROCESSIONS banner. The group want the banner to be simple, striking and effective and decided that each participant should make a flower to represent themselves on the banner. These beautiful little wild flowers jumped out at me - I had hoped that they might be Viola Odorata which has many Uses and Recipes  but these had no fragrance so I assume they are Common Dog Violets.

A napkin from the July 1915 Women’s March. 

Photo by John Groom’s Crippleage And Flower Girl’s Mission. 

Image courtesy of People’s History Museum

I made a pattern for everyone to use during our session

and played with some different colours

and textures using silks, linen and felt

showing that they could be hand or machine sewn.

We want our banner to have lots of different textures so we also invited all of our group to make a gutta outline of our flower on silk. Some of the silk had been donated by a friend who's dear Aunt had passed away last year, she was an avid crafter, very stylish and her nephew lives in the Old Village in Corby so it is lovely to be able to up-cycle a little of her legacy within our banner. Next week we will paint them with silk paints.

We had asked our group to raid their button tins as we felt that all these collected buttons from garments saved by women who were dear to us would make a fitting tribute to their strength, fortitude and inventiveness. See how we use them as our project progresses.

Our group cut out their patterns, chose their materials and were introduced to the wonders of Bondaweb a double sided iron on adhesive attached to a transfer paper which makes bonding tricky fabrics together so much easier.

Fabrics ironed onto Bondaweb

then cut and placed on a support fabric

and ironed into place. 

Our fabric basket after participants had made their choices!

We are very lucky to be able to have our sessions at Swan Gardens and as you can see we are surrounded by variations of violet, white and green! 

One of the beauties of being able to work as a pair and as the Eloquent Fold is we are able to circulate, share our skills and collect stories as we move from table to table. Last week were joined by some of the residents who shared their memories about changes in Corby and in the lives of women since they were girls.

"I have just realised that all women only got the vote after I was born in 1926, women over 21 only got the vote in 1928." 

"Women didn't talk as openly in those days as they do now."

"Mother and Grandmother were strong women and I had a great friend who was so kind, would do anything to help you if you needed help"

"Granny was a strong woman"

"I must have knitted miles of wool in my lifetime, but my hands are not up to it now."

Many thanks to Emma Gough and Tess Porter 

for sharing some of their thoughts with us.

We gave those that wanted some, embroidery threads so they could continue to work on on their pieces at home. Phiona and I are very excited to see how each flower will be transformed! It was another excellent evening, lots of conversations took place whilst all the choosing, outlining, cutting and sewing was taking place and everyone pitched in to help where they could. 

100 Hundred Years 100 Hundred Banners 

100 Hundred Artists

Follow our images here

Continuum - Autumn - Battery

In autumn trees store up energy in the roots and stems in order to survive the winter wit this thought in mind Miles and Dacombe decided that a battery / bird-box which emitted a vibrating hum 

and sugar glass acorns suspended from the branches of a beautiful willow tree would make an eloquent end to their walk through the seasons.

 Participants gathered round the tree, sat beneath the branches and listened to my poem

We Follow The Seasons

We follow the seasons,

bare, then budding,

greening up, fruiting.

Gold leaves turn brown

as we devour ourselves,

sucking ourselves dry.

We see in red, follow the light,

seek out the sun,

drinking it in.

Breathing out oxygen,

we are your vital organ.

Lungs of the world.

Our roots talk and twitch,

threads dividing to a

thousand tiny tendrils.

Microscopic fungus

delving through rock

extracting nutrients.

We play the long game,

here before you, still here

centuries after your passing.

A timeline of tales in peat, in soil

in the rings of our seasons which swell

then diminish as climates change.

Our presence soothes you,

our shaded spaces cool you,

mind and body, heart and soul.

Our songs, our sighing

carried on the wind with a

creak-crack of bark and twig.

We are male and female.

Pollen, flower, root and branch.

We are patient, opportunistic

clever seed stored up,

lying dormant waiting

to become viable.

Carole Miles 2017

The photographs from this part of the walk can be found here

Continuum was commissioned by Deep Roots Tall Trees as part of the Our Woods Festival

deeprootstalltrees.org/          http://deeprootstalltrees.org/about-us/who-we-are/