Pulling Together Asian Women's Group

This month at Pulling Together we completed our Heartstone Banner. It was wonderful to see how the individual panels came together to tell a story of its own. A story of a local group who shared their own histories whilst meeting and creating the textile and chose what they thought best told the story of Chandra and the mice in the search for the Heartstone. Her experiences with racism was something we could all identify with and her courage to overcome these attitudes was what we all have had to do in the past. Using the Union Flag cloth as a backing for our banner was a choice made by the group by showing how the flag is often hijacked by groups who are against immigration and can make us feel uncomfortable in feeling proud for the flag of the country we have all chosen to call home. The most exciting news is that the banner will go on show in the Trafford schools that took part in the project including Urmston Grammar School.

Pulling Together have been working on an exciting project together with Heartstone. We were recently contacted by SitaKumari a dancer and director of Heartstone and sent copies of the book The Heartstone Odyssey. The group decided that we would produce our own Heartstone Odyssey Banner with images that were relevant to the story the young women were all reading. After a few weeks we had collected enough images to begin to plan the banner. Sessions were built around the reading and discussing issues raised whilst reading including racism, intolerance, diversity and accepting that although we are different we need to work together to build better communities.

After we had selected which images to use we began to convert them into embroidery files. After preparing the fabric and deciding the layout we spent the next few sessions using the machine to embroider the panels.

This week at Pulling Together we continued with our gardening project. Spring has begun fully and being able to use our gardens, balconies or public parks is a fantastic way to help with our mental and physical health. A visit to the local garden centre to buy plants to share out to members has been a great way to connect to nature. We all look forward to seeing how our outdoor spaces grow in the coming months. A special thank you for all the young women who sent images of the amarylis bulbs they were given in December. The flowers are spectacular and it was great to see that they all did so well,

This week at Pulling Together we completed our A-Z of Britishness project. Everyone who took part in the project was sent an afternoon tea bag to enjoy with their family members. The photos of their individual tea times all looked delicious

This week at Pulling Together we completed the A-Z of Britishness fabric banner. A special thank you to all the people that

helped stitch up the banner.

This week at Pulling Together we completed our fabric book for the A-Z of Britishness.

This week at Pulling Together we were able to distribute some amaryllis plants as part of our Blooming OT project. We will post images of the bulbs after they have flowered.

This week at Pulling Together we have continued with our A-Z banner of Britishness. Thank you to all of the members who have helped prepare the squares and to those who have helped in stitching it together.

This week at Pulling Together we went for a trip to RHS Bridgewater. Luckily the weather was excellent and everybody enjoyed our first trip out since covid restrictions began.

This week at Pulling Together we have been creating our printed fabric book for our A-Z of Britishness project.