Swindon Stitch and Bitch

This year Swindon Stitch and Bitch have been busy making lots of little poppes to form a huge poppy. The giant poppy is an impressive 6ft tall and 4ft wide approx. The Giant poppy will be on display at the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery on the corner of Bath Road and Victoria Road in Swindon Old Town until 18th November. The Museum are selling handcrafted poppies at the Museum and all proceeds will go directly to the Royal British Legion.

Back at the start of the summer, Swindon Stitch and Bitch were contacted by Dressability who had lots of yarn donated to them from John Lewis. John Lewis had given the yarn to be used for a charitable cause. Dressability is a fantastic charity that makes and alters clothes for disabled people to make off the peg clothes a better fit to wear and more manageable for people with disabilities , but they don’t really knit for charity which is why they contacted Swindon Stitch and Bitch. The knitting group were thrilled to be given yarn to knit for charity and soon knew that they wanted to knit winter warmers for the elderly. There was so much yarn that the Cirencester Library Knitters were also recruited in to help. Tracey Major said “we really felt like the elderly are under catered for in local charities and with so many elderly people having to choose between eating and heating we knew we could put the yarn to good use and wrap up the Swindon elderly in fabulous knitwear.”  

You may have seen hanging baskets of poppies in Swindon town centre. Swindon Stitch and Bitch have been busy making and assembling the baskets of poppies to decorate the 12 hanging basket brackets around the statue of Brunel. The poppy hanging baskets will be up the end of Remembrance Sunday on the 11 November.

Swindon Stitch and Bitch have been working away on a display to celebrate and commemorate the RAF Centenary and for the British Legion Poppyappeal . The display was installed today at the Swindon Museum and Art Galleryin Old Town , between the reception desk and the gallery entrance. The display itself is a spitfire with a plume of poppies in the jet stream that swirls over the corridor and down the wall, as if the spitfire has swooped by. Tracey Major from Swindon Stitch and Bitch said that the group wanted to create something spectacular for the RAF Centenary, “we always commemorate remembrance Sunday with a poppy display, and with it being 100 years of the RAF we wanted to knit their most iconic aircraft, and have the poppies all tumbling out of the back in a wave to create a waterfall effect.” The spitfire itself was knitted by one lady, Eileen Ashmore who said, “once I’d figured out how I was going to make it came together alright; and I’m really pleased with how it looks.”

At 7.30 pm on the 20th September 2018 Swindon Stitch and Bitch went into to yarn bomb a tree to celebrate Open studios at Artsite. It was a dark and rainy night and it was blowing a bit of a gail. A giant gorilla was put in the tree and decorations were hung in the lower branches.

We had a lovely day at The Handmade Fair and we met lots of lovely people who came and chatted, some knitted a few rows with us, and some donated to our Dressability collection bucket - A big thank you to them. One of our assistant knitters on the day was just 9 years old and she picked up the pins and knitted a few rows of our ongoing knitted scarf for the elderly. What a little star she was! Unfortunately we didn't meet Kirstie Allsop because she was only there on the Friday, but luckily we took our own crocheted Kirstie.