Thinking Turkey

Well I'm up in Edinburgh at the moment, surrounded by the full cacophony of the festival, to meet with British Council staff and potential collaborators from Turkey in preparation for my visit there in October.

I was doing further research on the web about turkish embroidery on the train journey here, and came across the great short article written by Beth Gardner. She talks about the hidden messages in embroidered pieces made by Turkish women.

"Young women used embroidery to speak of things that they did not dare to put into words. They used colors and motifs in their scarves, waistbands, coverlets and carpets to express feelings of love, yearning and desire. A yellow scarf sent to a maiden’s beloved meant she was in love and missed him. If she embroidered her scarf with cypresses, she was thinking of death from longing. "

Read the full article here on the Embroiderers' Guild of America's website.

Lots of good things happening with sampler at the moment:

The project is featured in the British Council's latest Art, Architecture and Design newsletter.


We've just received some great photos of the pixel drawings and cut 'n' paste activities made by visitors at the Open Source Embroidery exhibition in Umea, which I'll post when I get back. And, we're planning for next stage of the exhibition when it tours to the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco in October.

And, if you're in the north east of england, on 25 Sept 6pm-10pm, I'll be performing solo!!! and talking about sampler-cultureclash at the Stitched Up event at The Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead, as part of Shipley Lates.

The collaboration with the V&A is moving on nicely. The plan is to feature the sampler project on the V&A's website as part of a new section about its collection of embroidered samplers.

So watch this space for future updates on all of these.