Today our group of Sikh, Muslim and Christian women shared stories of wise women from our lives and faiths – we found many common themes in our tales – the generosity and welcome of an house with an open door, the importance of sharing skills and wise words through generations, how to help others is to help God, stories of women of courage, strength and a positive approach in adversity, how God is always there to support us so never say never and just give things a go! We also shared inspirational stories about Khadija, Mai Bhago, Mary, Ruth, Naomi and other amazing women from our different faith traditions. A big thank you to the ladies from Touchstone Bradford for coming all this way to introduce the project and teach us these wonderful rug making techniques

Rada brought in some beautiful weavings to share with us made by members of her family in Serbia. Although they were made a long time ago it was amazing how contemporary they look!

Ruth and Jenny from Touchstone had brought in some examples of rugs in the process of being woven to show us the various techniques that we could use. They also gave us a goodie bag with some tools, wool and the base webbing for us to create our own rug with.

You can even create text!

We decided we wanted our design to contain an open door to symbolise the importance of being welcoming and generous to others, the flower or Maryam / Mary which is often used today to help women in labour as a symbol of strength in adversity, the names of the women who are special to us and a patchwork made of pieces of cloth that have a special meaning to women in the group. (Find out more about the amazing flower of Maryam here)

Next Wednesday we will begin to create our weaving!