We had a really energetic and positive meeting with the designer, Amanda, on Thursday.  The twelve of us began to get to grips with how we move from line drawings on a sheet of paper, to knitted, sewn and embroidered shapes.  Amanda explained that the design is quite loose and flexible, so that there is lots of room for individual interpretation of many of the pieces.

 We were joined by several new people - some enthusiastic and keen to join in, others still a bit sceptical!  The design does look very complex, but is really a lot of separate elements layered together, rather than each given their own space, which is how a lot of other textile pictures work.

The full size of the design, at 1.2 x 3.2 m is so big that we couldn't display it as a piece, but had to look at the two halves separately.  But it did give us a real feel for how big it will be, and

Amanda had brought along full size cut-outs of some of the elements.  Although the shapes will have to be approximately the right size, they will not need to fit together with the precision of a jigsaw.

We also discussed the colours that should be used, and concluded that there will be a place for most colours.  This is a big piece of work and it needs to be bold and colourful. We are hoping to use mainly recycled and donated materials, so if you have an odd ball of yarn, or scrap of plain fabric that you can't find a use for, we would be very pleased to give it a home.

So how far did we get?  Individuals have started to say which shapes they are interested in - the tree and birds, the dress, the bear, the basket and cakes to go in it, the Reminiscence Centre porch, finding knitting patterns for the edging and the sweets.  There really is something for everyone: smaller shapes that one person can do, like the birds, or the dress, very small elements like the sweets that lots of people might want to do one or two of, and larger elements like the Reminiscence Centre itself, which will be the work of several people.  Amanda will be back on Thursday 14th June to continue this process of looking at the individual shapes and seeing how they could be made, and who is interested in doing them.  In the meantime, the Knitting Group will be meeting as usual on Thursday 7th, 1.30 - 3.30 pm.