You are... a craftivist

This fine example of my appallingly bad embroidery is part of the 'You Are So Very Beautiful' stitched affirmations craftivist project from craftivism.com.

It is very messy looking but in my defence, I was in a hurry to finish it, and the only yarn I had to hand was some from a WIP longstitch project, which was too thick for the hessian I used. However, the main thing was to be involved with this project. Started by Betsy Greer, who sums it up: 'It’s time to let our acts of stitching go by leaving them in places for someone to find, someone who needs to hear those words just as you do, if not more. As craftivism is about healing ourselves as we make, and then healing the world with our products, let’s get to it.'

I tried a couple of places to perch my square; this painted windowsill was a good colour match.

In the end, I left it here, can't tell you where, just that it's in London.

Find out more about the 'You Are So Very Beautiful' project.

Ooh, I'm inspired

Embroidery is in fashion - it's official. As if we needed telling ;-)
But Inge Jacobsen's work makes the point in a different way. She has stitched through the glossy covers of fashion magazines including Vogue.
She describes this as 'intervening', saying: 'My practice is about intervening into found images through embroidery, cutting, and collaging. The images I use are mostly from women’s fashion magazines, pornographic images, and newspapers.
'My main concern as an artist is how one responds to the mass of imagery in the world. I am particularly interested in exploring the different contexts in which photography can be used. I like to stray from the conventional perceptions of what photography can and can’t be.
'With the over saturation of images, my practice seeks to intervene in this overwhelming consumption from the mass produced and alter it to create something unique.'
I absolutely adore this idea of taking something 'out there' and mass-produced and altering it, or upcycling it, to make something new and individual.

See Inge Jacobsen's website here

There I was, embroidering in the V&A...

At the weekend I went to the Power of Making exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. You've got plenty of time to see it: it finishes on January 2 2012.
Guest curator Daniel Charny defines the urge to make things like this: "For many people, making is critical for survival. For others, it is a chosen vocation: a way of thinking, inventing and innovating. And for some it is simply a delight to be able to shape a material and say ‘I made that’. The power of making is that it fulfils each of these human needs and desires."
The last one does it for me: the simple act of creating something that didn't exist before.

Exhibits include a gorilla hand-twisted from wire coat-hangers, a crocheted bear (life size) and a ceramic eye patch - lots of fascinating things to gaze upon...

Ele Carpenter was hosting an Embroidered Digital Commons workshop. She's two-thirds of the way through this project - a year to go! The project's aim is to 'stitch a concise lexicon of/for the digital commons. The term being embroidered, in short phrases, at the V&A was 'vector'. As Ele explains: "The term 'Vector' seems appropriate for an exhibition where the vectors of objects and ideas connect and touch, porting through different sites and zones."
I took over a hoop with the last phrase of the paragraph, which had been written on the fabric by a young boy earlier. He'd only managed to stitch the first two words, so I finished it off for him. Quite a surreal experience, feeling like a museum exhibit myself, as visitors paused to watch us at work. It was a bit of a rush job towards the end...