This is the story of the Yarndale Bunting, the incredible creative display that wowed visitors to Yarndale 2013.

The amazing display of crochet bunting was co-ordinated by Yarndale team member Lucy, author of the popular creative lifestyle blog Attic24.

Lucy was inspired by the knitted bunting created by Women’s Weekly magazine which hung at the 2011 Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace (image above).

She wrote up a pattern for making crochet Granny Bunting Triangles and put a call out to readers of her blog asking for help. She asked if anyone might consider making a few triangles for Yarndale which could be mailed to her and used to make a display for Yarndale. Little did she realise the scale of the project, it turned out to be far bigger than anyone could imagine!

In mid July 2013, packages containing crochet bunting began arriving. After sweet-talking the lovely Jane who owns the most scrumptious yarn shop in Skipton, it was agreed that Purl & Jane could be used as a temporary Bunting Delivery Depot. And so began a summer of hard graft for Lucy and her children. Every few days she would call in to see Jane and collect the packages which were then carried through town to her studio.

At her studio, Lucy worked with her three year old son, processing the bunting as it arrived in heaps. Opening the packages, ooohing and ahhing at the gorgeous crochet goodness, reading the amazing letters and cards, counting the triangles up, putting them into bags, then logging the information (name, location, number of triangles) in a notebook.

The parcels were coming in so thick and fast from all four corners of the world, and Lucy began to worry that she would never be able to keep up as the pile of parcels got bigger and bigger.

The answer lay with friends. When the piles of parcels got so high that they started to avalanche, she called in some help. She worked afternoon shifts with her three year old, then evening shifts with friends.

And then of course, the school holidays descended and summer was in full swing so she transferred the Processing Depot to home base. That way, Lucy had all three of her children to call on and it turned into rather a fun thing for them to join in with.

 

And so the bunting triangles kept on piling in!

Hundreds upon hundreds of lovingly made, colourful crochet triangles from all over the world.

In early September, with less than three weeks left before Yarndale, the packages were still arriving. As Lucy had been writing everything down in a notebook she knew how BIG this project had become, it was pretty mind blowing!  Incredibly, 582 parcels containing more than 6,000 triangles had been mailed from all over the world, and those thousands of triangles had to be somehow joined together…………..

HEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was decided that for a few weeks, The Yarndale team would enlist the helping hands of the ladies at Wild Oats knit and natter.

Some huge reels of cotton tape were purchased and stringing commenced.

And so the triangles gradually became bunting strings….

….and the piles of bunting strings began to grow reassuringly quickly.

Meanwhile, back at the studio, Lucy set about trying to photograph some of the bunting triangles…..

 

 

WOW! So much bunting!!

By now, the Yarndale team had reached the Final Push. On the Thursday morning, just 48 hours before the Yarndale doors opened, the final sack of triangles was brought to the café for stringing.

It was rather wonderful to finally catch a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel.

The atmosphere in the café on this Thursday morning was really amazing. All these lovely, kind, creative ladies being so generous with their time, working like the clappers to finish it all for Yarndale.

Lovely, lovely ladies (and gent!), Yarndale can’t thank you enough for your help, we honestly couldn’t have done it without you.

So.

The time had come.

Deep trepidation and high anxiety as the Yarndale team prepared for The Hanging.

In fact, despite the height of the ceiling, it wasn’t nearly as difficult as the team had feared.

Each five metre length of bunting was passed up and knotted to the previous length, so creating one enormous, continuous length swinging from side to side. Back and forth it went….

….and it began to look magnificent.

And the more strings of bunting that went up, the more magnificent it became.

After months of hard work and a huge amount of associated worry, Lucy’s Creative Vision had miraculously come to life. It happened! It actually happened!

THE YARNDALE BUNTING :: Ta-dah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Absolutely, jaw-droppingly stunning.

The bunting was an outstanding success and made a fantastic welcome for all our visitors.

Would you like a few facts about the Yarndale Bunting?

Number of parcels received :: 582

Number of triangles :: 6, 212

Length of bunting :: 1.25 km (ohmygosh, yes it’s true!)

Number of countries :: 31. Yes THIRTY-ONE. Want to read the list? Ok>>>>

1. Great Britain
2. Italy
3. Germany
4. Ireland
5. New Zealand
6. USA
7. Israel
8. Australia
9. Netherlands
10. Canada
11. Argentina
12. Spain
13. South Africa
14. France
15. Portugal
16. Greece
17. Sweden
18. Hungary
19. Malaysia
20. Gibraltar
21. Finland
22. Czech Republic
23. Slovenia
24. Iceland
25. Japan
26. Belgium
27. St. Helena Island (South Atlantic)
28. Denmark
29. Switzerland
30. Brunei
31. Norway

A lovely lady who made some very beautiful triangles to send from her home in Spain wrote a beautiful blog post about the Yarndale Bunting. It was wonderful to read about it from her (very eloquent) point of view, and we’d like to share some of her words here. She wrote ::

“There we are peeps representing and participating in colour our unity for yarn, crafts and the handmade. We herald our love for yarn, our love for colour, our love for beauty and demonstrating that craft breaks the language barrier because that bunting is a message that can be understood by all. I feel so good inside to see it, I feel just a little bit of me is there, I feel I belong, I feel the admiration of thousands of yarn lovers admiring OUR bunting!!!!   I feel it is a tremendous achievement to have brought together so many many people through the creation of this bunting.”

Beautifully said Amanda, thank you.

The bunting will be given a second chance to shine during Yarndale 2014, it’s a whole lot of creative happy!