Anniversary tapestry - our new textile treasure

Inspired by the wonderful "Textile Treasures" exhibition put on by NFWI, we decided to create our own textile treasure to celebrate our 50 years as a busy WI. A group of us got together to decide how best to go about this, and as a result we decided to depict some of the many activities we have done through the years. We designed it all ourselves and then we had "Sit and Stitch" sessions so that as many members of the Institute as possible could come and sew a bit of the tapestry. Even those who thought they couldn't sew contributed, and enjoyed it too! The central panel shows the daffodils which are such a feature of the village in the spring.

The activities which we chose out of the many things we have done in our 50 years are - games evenings, book group, walks, garden group, book group, campaign for a zebra crossing and phone box, story sacks, our cups of tea, the millennium park bench we bought, art group, drama and singing group, produce shows and eco teams

Village flowerbed

One of the many ways we celebrated our 50th Anniversary was to plant up a large raised bed on the village green. We chose a golden colour scheme, and raised lots of plants from seed, grew on plug plants and bought some bedding plants to fill the gaps. A team of us cleared the site and planted up all our plants. We then drew up a rota for watering through the summer - this was, surprisingly, a pleasure as we always got thanks and compliments from other residents when we were tending our plants!

Story Sacks

Over several years we have been making Story Sacks for local schools - these are aimed at helping children to read and to grow to love books. We create all the characters in a book, either by sewing or knitting, provide some word games, and a tape of the story, all in one "sack" so that the children can act out the story through the toys.
Just before Christmas we knitted The Christmas Story, but we have also completed The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Noah's Ark, Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and many others. We love working out how to make the characters and accessories, and we hope the children love the results!

After our first Storysack meeting of the year we are now starting another book called "The Acorn Sailor". To "illustrate" this, we will have to make a boat, some more knitted people, a fabric river scene, sand castles and lock gates and of course an acorn! More photos when we have made some of these items, but here is a picture of the book's front cover to give you an idea!

October 2010

We have just had our first storysack meeting of the autumn and the new headmaster at St George's is very keen for us to carry on making storysacks, and has asked if we will do "The Three Little Pigs". We have done this one before for Bell Lane School, so we know just how to make the three little houses as well as the pigs, so hopefully we will get this one done in time for Christmas.