Scottish Sampler Exhibition

Above and Below: Isabella Cook 

This week I managed to get a rushed peek at the exhibition 'Embroidered Stories' at the National Museum of Scotland it is on until 21st April 2019. It features a collection of Scottish samplers gathered over many years by Leslie B Hurst. They were even more incredible in their fineness and detail but also the wonderful stories of the creators often very young girls. I have to go back again and read more stories and wonder further at the incredible skill of these young women. 

The two samplers above were most probably inspired by the Queen's Zebra gifted to her by George III in 1762.

Above: Artist unknown The London Magazine 1762

Above: A McGilly 1815. Below: Mary Robert 1767

Helen Storey

Professor Helen Storey has been announced as the first Artist in Residence at Za'atari Refugee Camp for 2019 to cocreate fashion and design projects with Syrian women and their children. 

Top and bottom are images of a dress for our time, a gown made from a UNHCR refugee tent in 2015. 

Louise Gardiner

Louise Gardiner's responce to the The Womankind Pukka project is a cape of empowerment. A visual representation of the ingredients in womankind tea and a meditation on what we put into our bodies.

"Stitched from the ground up and inspired by 21 natural, health giving ingredients, the centrepiece for the campaign has taken the form of a beautiful cape and aims to capture all that is feminine, powerful and potent about woman kind. This isn’t about superficial beauty, it’s about nurturing individuality and about taking a step back from the norm and thinking about what we’ve all got to contribute. To encourage a gentle more charismatic femininity, it’s not about sex and celebrity, It’s about the essence of being female and being in touch with your own true nature and creativity.

Having been deeply influenced by teaching women all around the world, tapping into this amazing sisterhood and realising how much we all have in common, this cape is a joyful celebration of all those women that have been and all those yet to come. Anyone and everyone was welcome to try the cape on and feel like that queen, warrior, nurturer, rockstar; any and all of those wonderful roles that we play."