We are looking forward to a month of sharing and talking about textiles with our Instagram Challenge #SeptTextileLove.

This year it will be a little different as we have included some prompts that could potentially start more conversations about lockdown and textiles, if you would like to; the joy of the challenge is that every prompt has many different interpretations and participants need only share what they’re comfortable with.

The full list of prompts will be shared here on the seam blog on 31 August, ready for people to respond to from 1 September. If you like to plan ahead, you can see the prompts a week early by subscribing to the seam newsletter. The full list of prompts is shared with our newsletter subscribers as an exclusive preview so they can get a bit of a head start (and there’s a #SeptTextileLove planner for you to download too).

Who can get involved?

Anyone who creates or loves textiles can be part of #SeptTextileLove. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just started experimenting with textiles in lockdown, whether that’s as a hobby you’ve always been curious about, as an antidote to boredom or for your own wellbeing, or if you are a textile professional, it doesn’t even matter where in the world you are based; everyone is welcome to take part in the conversation.

How does #SeptTextileLove work?

For each of the 30 days of September there is a different textile-related prompt for you to interpret on your Instagram feed. You can respond to as many of the prompts as you wish, this could be only a few or it may be all of them. The only requirement is that you include the hashtag #SeptTextileLove so we, and everyone else involved, can find, like, comment on and share your posts!

What do you get out of it?

Some of the things we love about #SeptTextileLove are:

• Inspiring images of textiles with interesting insights from the makers
• Thought-provoking conversations, see our blog post A good conversation… about sustainability in textiles (from last year’s challenge)
• Being part of a supportive Instagram textile community
• Thinking about our work in new ways through responding to the prompts
• By the end of the month many participants comment that they’ve love for it to continue beyond the 30 days of September, as they’ve had so much fun and love seeing what others share (search for #SeptTextileLove on Instagram to see posts from previous years)

Our background images for 2020

Every year one or two seam members provide our background images from their current work. This year we have a theme of nature-related work from Joy and Kate.

Joy Merron – Home Alone Drinking Tea. Joy’s response to lockdown. Joy, as well as the rest of the nation, has been drinking more tea in lockdown. As the teabags piled up, Joy started dissecting and playing with them. The embroidery on the used teabags in this work mimic Camellia sinensis, the blossom of the tea plant.

Kate Bond – Malvern Hills. The image is a small section of a mural Kate designed for a property developer in Malvern. The plants are bracken, gorse and rosebay willowherb which were all growing in abundance when Kate visited the Malverns.

What next?

Follow the seam blog to ensure you receive the prompts on 31 August, ready to start in September.

If you’d like to start thinking about the prompts ahead of the challenge and prepare a few responses, subscribe to the seam newsletter and you’ll receive the full list of prompts one week before they’re publicly released. We also include a prompt planner for you to download too.

The seam newsletter is issued four times a year and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Penny Wheeler