Spinning Yarns - Darwin the Geologist

The girls and I went to a Festival of Ideas event on Thursday evening at one of our local University museums. Sedgewick Museum called 'Spinning Yarns' Textile artist Jenny Langley spoke about her  "dream commission" - interpreting Charles Darwin's travels and discoveries into a tactile story rug. You can read and see pictures of the mat here Darwin the Geologist
It was truly wonderful in hearing how Jenny Langley told us of the inspiration and how she made the totally amazing story mat. The pictures on the blog no way reflect how beautiful it is in real life, or how big it is. After the event we also got to see her 'city and guilds in textiles' work she did back in 2002 - We were indeed very impressed with her stunning work. Her major piece was inspired by 'Giants Causeway' Then we just drooled, not literally, over very large scrapbooks featuring her interpretation in textile of our local botanical gardens - Just stunning, and so tactile with it.

Hope you will enjoy reading a little about the project/event, as much as we enjoyed meeting Jenny and hearing how the mat evolved over time.
Here are a couple of pics. that will hopefully give you a better feel of the work and a close up  showing a little of the amazing stitching.