Victoria ‘Vicky’ Harrison is a textile artist based in Penzance, who has been facilitating the making of large community textiles for 10 years. Vicky has set up the West Penwith Embroidered Bees Project, a collaborative project to create a huge art quilt covered in bees, each bee embroidered by an enthusiastic individual, novice or experienced. The photograph shows the quilt so far, for your inspiration. We are all encouraged to research a bee – people have already researched nearly 200 of the 300 wild bee species in Cornwall – and create a beautiful image, within a hexagon of size 6cm, ready to be stitched into a quilt. You can find more information on how to take part on Vicky’s Facebook page.
The aims of the project are:
- To raise awareness of all the different kinds of bees
- To make links between buzzy bee lovers and projects
- To create a beautiful embroidery that can be shown, and eventually sold, to raise money for wildlife planting projects.
As part of the project, Vicky and her friends have already planted 1,000 hand grown plants on a Penzance roundabout along with many seeds, resulting in 72 kinds of wildflowers researched to attract specific bees and bugs. They have a moth bed, a wild herb bed, a dye bed, a meadow bed with yellow rattle, and a blue butterfly bed planted with birds’ foot trefoil.
If you live in the Penzance area and would like to get involved in embroidering a bee as part of the quilt, Vicky is holding drop-in sessions at Whole Again Communities in Penzance (temporarily located at the Salvation Army on Queen Street) from 10am until 12 noon on the following dates:
- Friday 11 November
- Friday 18 November
- Friday 9 December
The bee textile project is unfunded, and Vicky is asking for donations of thread, needles, and white, cream or beige napkins or tablecloths, or heavy cotton sheets. It’s a brilliant project – do get involved!
Here’s a little video to show you more about the progress of the project.