Posted on October 26th, 2022

An award winning collaborative embroidery project gave a presentation to a community group in Marlborough last week. 

The work of The Red Dress project acts as a platform for women’s voices to be heard, and was started by Kirstie Macleod in 2008.

She was awarded funding by the British Council of Dubai.

Kirstie Macleod gave a presentation to Textiles and Stitch Around Marlborough at one of their regular meetings to discuss her work and impact.

But The Red Dress began it’s life being sketched on a napkin.

A member of the group, Rosalind Lomas said: “In her presentation Kirstie showed us a wonderful variety of photos of ladies from different countries stitching their embroideries and mentioned her visits to Kosovo, Rwanda, the Congo and Australia.

“More recently The Red Dress has been to Poland where a group of Ukrainian ladies sang as they stitched and last week Kirstie returned from a visit to Egypt where she worked with Bedouin ladies before a visit to Cairo.”

Originally the intention was for it to provide an artistic platform for women around the world to tell their personal stories through embroidery but over the 13 years the project has encouraged self-expression and an opportunity for voices to be heard.

Source: GnH