The Great Tapestry of Scotland

 Today we were joined by Susie Finlayson who gave us an absolutely fascinating talk about the Great Tapestry of Scotland. What a wonderful project it is and a couple of members who have actually been to visit it in Galashiels can testify to how brilliant it is. I say tapestry, but as we know it's an embroidery but has been called a tapestry in the tradition of the Bayeux, Stamford and Quaker pieces. 

The idea for the tapestry came from Alexander McCall Smith after he visited the Prestonpans tapestry (there seems to be a lot of embroidery-tapestries about!); he asked Andrew Crummy to design it and Alistair Moffat had the task of deciding which events in Scotland's history to include. The resulting tapestry is a very impressive 140m long x 1m wide and consists of 165 panels - that's four times the size of the Bayeux. The tapestry reflects not just the lives of the rich and famous, the kings and queens, but the ordinary people of Scotland too.

Stitchers from all over Scotland took part in embroidering the panels, all coordinated by Dorie Wilkie who led the stitching on the Prestonpans tapestry. Susie became involved at the beginning of the project and was initially not a stitcher but has become a very accomplished one! The original designs for panels were traced onto linen union fabric and then with minimal instructions or rules sent off to various groups round Scotland to be completed. Stitches and colours were pretty much left to the groups and they all added in their own personal stories and tags resulting in a rich and varied collection of panels. Officially the panels cover from the ice age to 1999 with the reformation of the Scottish Parliament, although extra bits have been incorporated in the Welcome Panel. The Welcome Panel is the first to greet you as you enter the purpose built centre where the tapestry is displayed. Galashiels was chosen as the permanent home for its accessibility while not being Edinburgh or Glasgow. A further panel - the Interchange Panel was commissioned by the Borders Railway Community Partnership and is being worked on at the moment; in fact this is the piece that Susie brought to our meeting and that we had the privilege of stitching parts of. Even Queen Camilla has added stitches to it, so we are in good company! Those of us who added to the panel signed Susie's record book - again including HRH!

We had a really great day with Susie and her anecdotes about the project were wonderful. We just need a trip north of the border to see the whole thing now.

The Interchange Panel

Our contribution in progress!