Artistic projects

Artistic projects

The Australian Quaker Narrative Embroidery/Friends in Stitches project (formerly known as the Australian Quaker Tapestry) is an Australian community development and outreach programme. The project was conceived in 2005 when Verley Kelliher, a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), visited the Quaker Tapestry Centre in Kendal, UK.

The Drones Quilt Project is a USA-based quilting programme and an example of the deliberate political use of textiles and decorative needlework in particular. It began in 2013 and was started by Leah Boger, a former USA Naval officer and anti-war activist.

The Functional Needle Project was a textile installation set up in Canada in 2014. The project leader was the textile artist, Aram Han Sifuentes. The aim of the project was to explore the role of hand work.

The Home of the Brave Quilt project is a USA grassroots organisation set up to make and present a quilt to the immediate family of every USA military member who has died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The project was founded by Donald Beld of the Citrus Belt Quilters (southern California, USA) and was started in July 2004.

The Keiskamma Art Project includes a group of about 130 South African artists and craftspeople who initially specialised in hand embroidery and tapestry weaving, but who have now expanded to include other media. The Keiskamma Art Project was set up in 2000 by Dr. Carol Hofmeyr (South Africa), Jan Chalmers (UK) and Jackie Jezewski (France).

The Needlework Development Scheme (NDS) was a collaborative project between art and design education and industry and was set up in Scotland in 1934. The aim of the NDS was to encourage the use of embroidery and to raise the standards of (commercial) design in Britain. It was financed by the Scottish thread manufacturers, J. and P. Coats (based in Paisley).

The US Citizenship Test Sampler is a project begun in 2012 by the fibre artist, Aram Han Sifuentes (Chicago). It involves stitching a sampler with all of the one hundred questions and answers that are used for the US Citizenship and Naturalization test.