Craftivists rock!

I went to the unveiling last night of the #imapiece jigsaw pieces at The Peoples Museum in Manchester and it was brilliant. There were over 600 pieces there and it was fabulous to see them all displayed together. I'm just going to show you lots of photographs now :)

This was taken outside looking in as I left. You can see the scale of the installation.

Sarah Corbett (white t-shirt) is the organiser and craftivist who organised the whole concept. She is pictured with her crafty avengers Mr X Stitch, Deadly Knitshade and Hilary from Craft Blog UK.

The lady being photographed here made over 22 pieces for her friends and family to embroider and stitched quite a few herself.

I saw loads of pieces that I really liked so here are some pictures of those.

You can see better pictures on my Flickr stream. And of course here's my piece in the installation.

If you want to join in then there is still time - the installation is going to Belfast at some stage in May so you can get stitching. Find out all the information here. And if you don't want to be involved in this particular project, check out lots of other ideas here.

My first piece of craftivism

I wrote about #imapiece the other day and here is my finished piece. It's not perfect as this is the first embroidered piece I have done with words (I'm normally a straight stitch kind of girl!) but I think it works.

It reads 'Live simply so that others can simply live' The quote really appealed to me and I knew as soon as I saw it that it would be the one that went on my piece. It needed something to make the words jump out and as I was out and about with my sewing box, the only thing I had was sequins. Not sure they work with the simple quote or not - maybe buttons or ribbon would be better?

I may keep this one for myself and make another to send off for the installation. If I do I will embroider the words onto a piece of white fabric and then attach it to the patterned fabric as the wording kind of gets lost! Also if I get chance then I will send one to my MP - if not then he will get a photograph of the work with an explanation of why it is important to me.

Have you made one of these? Ever used crafting for good? I have a few ideas of things I can do in my neighbourhood using craft and it's quite exciting - maybe only to me though!