Wednesday 7 March 2018

Making Art and Crafts in Oswestry

Message from Debbie Marais, Oswestry Library.

Oswestry Makes 2018.  Flowers of  Peace & Remembrance – help us decorate the town with flowers to accompany Oswestry's Remembrance activities.

Oswestry Makes is now in it's fifth year.  It is a festival to celebrate the many opportunities  there are in and around the town to learn new 'making skills', by locally made art, and showcase the amazing  talent that exists locally. 

You may remember the splendid life-size textile allotment 'grown' by over 200 local people, community groups and artists that was exhibited in Oswestry Library in October 2015.

This year's theme is Flowers of Peace and Remembrance and we are encouraging anyone that wants to get involved, to get making flowers made from whatever medium you want and to help us decorate the town from mid-October leading into the Remembrance celebrations and the Wilfred Owen festival in Oswestry during the first two weeks of November. 

There are many flowers in addition to the lovely poppy, such as daisies, cornflowers, forget-me-nots and lillies all with a story attached and used by countries from all over the world.  To help you get started we will be running a series of workshops at Oswestry Library and there will be other workshops hosted by Willow Gallery, Qube etc around the town.  To be kept up to date about events and for ideas, patterns and places to learn please pop into Oswestry Library and look at the display or email oswestrymakes@gmail.com to be added to our mailing list or visit

https://oswestrymakes.wordpress.com/ Please share photos of things you make and ideas.

If you have a skill to share or want to promote a workshop you are running please get in touch through the website or email address.

With the allotment 200+ people got involved - this year we would like to see more than 500 people contribute.  Come and visit our stall at local events such as the food & balloon festivals and knit, stitch and spin in public days during the summer.

The Festival Weekend will be 13/14 October with a textile taster in the library on 13/10 11am- 3pm and Wonderful Wool day on the Sunday.  We are hoping to have an artist in residence Ticky Lowe working to produce a poppy and a cornflower for the weeks either side of the festival weekend.

Oswestry Makes is organised by a partnership comprising Friends of Oswestry Library, local community artists, Willow Gallery, Ewe & Ply, Gemmipop Designs, Qube and Oswestry Embroiderers Guild
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