Stitching suffrage together
Over the past couple of weeks, an old boardroom inside Wellington Museum has been transformed into a fabric workshop.
Wellington sewing initiative Vinnies Re Sew embarked on a Suffrage in Stitches project to recreate the 1893 suffrage petition in kind. The organisation is asking individuals and groups to pick up needle and thread to stitch 546 different panels, representing all the pages of the suffrage petition.
Each panel will be stitched together to create a 274-metre-long textile piece, to be displayed inside the museum early next year.
The panels are inspired by women – whether that’s women who signed the petition 125 years ago, or someone within the family who was a role model.
Re Sew textile recycling co-ordinator Caroline O’Reilly has been organising the workshops, as well as making her own panel, inspired by her mother, Mary O’Reilly.
She also wanted to chart the journeys of the women on the path to gather signatures, so she added meandering green thread to her piece of fabric.
‘‘The petition went around the country, winding up roads, through valleys.
‘‘So all these loose threads represent all the roads they travelled on.’’
Throughout September people have been dropping by Wellington Museum to talk about women who inspired them and to pick up a new stitching technique or two. Re Sew volunteer Irihāpeti Te Aho has started her fifth panel: one honouring the wāhine of Ngāti Kahungunu.
‘‘Women have got a strong voice in Māoridom that people don’t know about,’’ Te Aho said.
She joined Vinnies Re Sew a few months ago and said she had found it a great way to help and give back to the community. Funded by St Vincent de Paul, Vinnies Re Sew helps people with their sewing skills, while redirecting materials from the landfill.
The call is still out for people to take part in Suffrage in Stitches – the fabric workshops will be back at Wellington Museum in October, December and January for a week each. So far, people from as far as Queenstown and the Coromandel, as well as some people in San Francisco have put their hands up to make a panel.
The deadline for a fabric panel is February 27.
* For details on Suffrage in Stitches, email resew@vinnieswgtn.org.nz.