Getting ready for Glory Box workshops

This morning I have been preparing for Workshop 6 for the Glory Box Project.  A one year artist in residency I have at Deer Park working with a wonderful group of Coptic Women.  Each fortnight I facilitate a workshop exploring the Glory Box tradition in their culture and it creative making processes

It has been a few weeks since I was last with the group, due to some big tragic changes in our family.  And during my time away lots of exciting developments have been happening.

After spending a number of weeks getting to know one another, our skills and sharing glory box stories we have decided to work collaboratively to make items to be placed in a glory box.  The first item being a table cloth.

Creating an item for the heart of the home, like a table cloth is very meaningful. It is upon this textile where family members and friends gather to eat and share their conversations.

Images will be embroidered, crotchet and appliqué on to the separate patches by each of the women participating in the project! (see table cloth design image above!)

This Thursday to get things going I will talk about some difference approaches to designing a table cloth square.  Last year while I was artist in residence at the Kyneton Museum the signature tablecloth played a huge role in developing my new body of work.   Like for this Glory Box table cloth it was produced by a group of women - the theme being names of local families - and the design aesthetics were very strong using white floss on white linen with white embroidered lace - beautiful!

Also free hand embroidery plays a big role in my practice and I will present on how this technique can be used - from previous works such as these:

We will also look at tracing designed embroidery works and I would like to try out this technique by At Swim Two Birds called building a design (she calls it a city) from paper trash)

Here is a shot of a table cloth by my Great grandmother, who passed away in 1996 - she was a fantastic stitcher, as is her sister.

I found this forum of young mum's discussing what they would like to organise and also make for their young daughters glory box - I found this very sweet and inspiring.  It is my children's birthday's coming up in July and I am planning to make them both a small sewing box - I am hoping to include sewing items from various special women in their lives.