This short film is based on ‘Stitching Botanicals’, a group of volunteers based in the National Botanic Garden of Wales in Carmarthenshire.
During the last two years, over 80 volunteers have created five special collections of impressive and evocative embroidery. These include Welsh county flowers, rare Welsh plants, medicinal plants, meadow plants, and many beautiful fungi. ‘Stitching Botanicals’ is perhaps the first of its kind to work so closely with a botanical collection.
Consisting mainly of women over 60, the group’s skills are in a wide range of different techniques; including appliqué, fine hand embroidery, machine embroidery, fabric dyeing and manipulation, wet and dry felting, and raised embroidery; continuing a long line of Welsh women and textiles.
At the moment, the focus is to create embroideries from some of the herbarium specimens, a collection of around 30,000 pressed plants that have been kept by the garden. Although equally valuable, the embroidered versions can be displayed during public engagement events in lieu of their real specimens.
The film follows the members from their pleasant monthly meetings, visiting individuals in their homes as they take their pieces home to finish them. During the documentary, we learn their reasons for being there; to practice sewing them or be inspired by the Garden’s extensive collections? Or for many, it may just be a way of socializing amongst a group of like-minded people.
This is an honest, simple and warm portrait of a group of lively and creative women.
Stitching Botanicals (English Subtitles)
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This film was commissioned as part of AmCam2, Am’s community-based digital film festival. AmCam is supported by the Arts Council of Wales.