Textile art

 I went to the creative arts group session yesterday.  We are creating an embroidered blanket which a team of two from the art school are putting together in hospitals and various collective groups such as ours.  It is basically a Tracy Emin-type textile project for the community and we went through various examples in a preliminary talk.  One of our most well known examples, apart from Tracey's blankets etc, is a textile message from a young girl, Lorina Bulwer, who was housed in an asylum in Great Yarmouth.  Her work looks incredibly contemporary although it was done somewhere around 1893.  Her words were her plea to get out of the asylum. 

We each started a square of embroidery using words that are important to us in belonging to a community.  I used the words which came to mind when I joined the group three or four years ago when seeing somebody smiling at me was important to me and having friendly people around and being made to feel welcome.  I finished another square whilst watching the football last night.  This one I used just a single word: Talk.  It is so important to talk to one another.  When all the squares are sewn together single words are just as important as whole sentences and add context and stops to dwell on in the finished product  

We are having a second session on the blanket (it will be all our squares sewn together onto a soft piece of fabric like the fabric used in teddybears) in December.  It was a great session and everybody enjoyed it.  No fancy stitching is required, just running stitch if you want to which is what I did.  Only two of us finished our squares and we were photographed holding them.  I then finished another last night and will no doubt do at least another one.

The creative group is one of my favourite groups that I go to and is run by Creative East who run events throughout Norfolk and some of Suffolk.  I think quite a lot of people are put off because they think it is just old people and no fun.  The people may be old but they are definitely fun with high intelligence, life experience to share, and friendship.  I took a friend along once but she didn't want to go again.  She could not adjust to the age and said it made her think too much about dementia. Funny because she is at least three years older than me.   When I first retired I found it difficult to adjust to only meeting older people and not seeing young and old mixed.  I have got used to it now and find being with my own age group most of the time is being with people of experience with lots to offer and share.  I have been able to face that I am no longer a young person however much I might like to think I am.  Underneath the grey hairs everybody has an opinion, something to say if you talk to them, hidden gems of wisdom, and most of all, everybody needs friendship and they wouldn't be there if they didn't.   

I enjoyed my afternoon very much. 

Today unfortunately it is chucking it down with rain.  I am not sure what I will do yet but I will tell you tomorrow.