International Women's Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality.
This year the theme for International Women's Day is a gender equal world — a world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that’s diverse, equitable and inclusive, where difference is valued and celebrated. We believe that together we can forge women’s equality and that collectively we can all #EmbraceEquity — so why not give yourself a hug and post it on social media to support the initiative!
This year to celebrate International Women’s Day I went back to a group that I’ve worked with for years. We started a Women’s Group some years ago, originally sponsored by the Racial Equality Council and Plymouth Museum to encourage BAME women and women from some of the disadvantaged parts of the city to come together and learn new skills.
Together we covered stools for the gallery, started a quilting project, and this in time grew into a Women’s Traditional Craft Group — providing a social space where women can safely gather and share ideas, skills and experiences.
I returned to the group last Friday, invited by the current organisers Joanne and Charlotte, to run a “make a coaster” workshop. The group now meets at The Box, the wonderful museum, gallery and social space in Plymouth.
At Helen Round, we’ve recently launched our new Slow Stitched Coaster and Mini Quilt Kits, in collaboration with Rebekah Johnston, an emerging textile artist. It struck me that the Coaster Kits would make a great project for the group to work on together.
I had a dry run with some of my team at Helen Round on Wednesday and we came up with some beautiful slow stitched coasters.
Even the less practiced sewers created beautiful and useful coasters!
With 30 women booked into the session at The Box, 20 of whom were likely to want to sew, I needed to make reasonable preparation. We cut the linen from off cuts and made sure the wadding was the right size in advance to save time, since the session was only 2 hours long!
The idea of the kits is that they can be slow stitched to your own timetable, so there’s no need to rush. To keep with the ethos of meditative making, I wanted to make sure all the materials were ready so that the group still had time for social interaction — an important part of the session.
We had a lovely afternoon, with great chats, good company and beautiful coasters made.
It was a wonderful way to share a Friday afternoon and to look forward to International Women’s Day and #EmbraceEquity. Thanks to The Box, Joanne, Charlotte and all the women who took part.
For more information about our Slow Stitched Coaster and Mini Quilt Kits, and for more details on International Women’s Day, follow the links. IWD has occurred for well over a century — the first gathering in 1911 was supported by over a million people. Today, IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere.
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