The World’s Longest Embroidery!

I could write so many posts about the wonders I saw and the fun I had yesterday at The Big Stitch at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. I am going to focus posts on the two main bits I took part in: The World’s Longest Embroidery and Raised Work Embroidery. As you can probably tell by the title of this post, this focuses on The World’s Longest Embroidery.

I got to the Ashmolean before the Big Stitch started, so headed to the cafe for a quick, refreshing drink. I looked at my map and planned my day, then headed across the floor to see this huge bit of embroidery. Now I knew it was long obviously, but I didn’t expect to see it running up the wall a few times!

Over 7000  people from all around the world have added their mark to this piece of embroidery and were doing so when I arrived.

I sat down towards the end of this table and spotted a huge roll of the fabric next to me!

Contributions on the quilt are completely open to the stitchers. Here are some of the contributions near where I sat:

This is what I added:

As you can tell, I’m feeling the Christmassy vibe a bit at the moment! I did it completely freehand, as you can tell as it’s not perfect straight, and the angles are off. It took me far longer than I realised, but it was great fun. You know I enjoy sewing, but this was very social, talking to other people from near and far. Lots of people beside me were making their mark:

So, I hear you ask – why is this the world’s longest piece of embroidery?

Well according to Mr X Stitch it is all due to the continuing line running through the whole piece:

Finally I’m going to leave you with a picture of the floor! It will give you an idea of just how long it is – over 600m and counting!

 

The Big Stitch

The joys of twitter and facebook mean we can keep up to speed on what is going on, if you follow the right people of course! I follow Mr X Stitch (@MrXStitch) and he tweeted about the Big Stitch at the Ashmolean in Oxford, on December 1st.  I read a bit about it,  after all, Oxford is a relatively short train journey away…

As well as a special exhibition there are:

• Interesting sounding lectures
• Young Embroiders’ Workshops
• Creative Workshops For Adults
• Tours
• The World’s Longest Embroidery
• Crowd Stitching
• Embroidery Demonstrations
• and more…

All of this is free!

50% of the tickets for tours and workshops are pre-bookable.  I’m booked onto a workshop from 2 to 4pm on Raised Work Embroidery. I also tried to book onto the mornings workshop on making a Japanese Pocket Book, but all the pre-bookable tickets had gone. I’m planning to try to get there in time to get a ticket on the day. For some adults the tours may be of more interest. There are also lots of workshops for kids, as well as drop in sessions.

I am also hoping to help extend the world’s longest embroidery (currently 600m long!) and join in with the crowd stitching. They even have 1000 mini kits available to help you have a go!

To learn more about The Big Stitch see here.

It looks like fun and is incredible value. I will be travelling for approximately 1hr 30mins each way to get there and back, but it should be worth it. If you’re in the area, why not pop over/in?