Posted: July 6, 2024   •   Posted in: Equality

Crafting for Beccles Pride

Our Craft Group has taken on a more community focused aspect in recent meetings, which was part of our original remit. We have focused on making a Quaker banner for the Beccles Pride event.  I designed the banner and completed the central lettering, which consists of scraps of fabric in rainbow colours over stitched with free style machine embroidery.  Other members have made and embellished love hearts to go around the edge of the banner.  We had been gifted a large amount of rip stop nylon scraps which made this task much easier to achieve as it does not fray.

I have been quite impressed how everyone has engaged with this, no matter their level of sewing expertise. Sadly, sewing is often portrayed as something hard that you need to learn over years and is difficult to master. Having worked on sewing projects with children as young as five, I can safely say this is not the case, all is needed is a little self-belief.  The positive attitude of the group has demonstrated to me that sewing projects may feature in future activities, without too much difficulty.  It is always rewarding to see those with more experience helping those with less.  This encompasses an economy of shared skills I originally envisioned.

Proud Pages is a social group for young LGBTQIA+ people. I made contact with this group to offer them a chance to contribute to the banner.  This was very successful. The young people took up the idea and each worked on making a decorative heart.  On a return visit, Carrie and Marina came along too and helped to stitch hearts onto the banner.  By pushing the banner beyond the Quaker community, it has become a genuine community project, and the individuality of each participant can clearly be seen in the completed piece, which also works as a unified whole. At the Beccles Pride event the banner stood out as expressing the unique individuals who make up a unified community.

Gina (Beccles Quaker Meeting)