#imapiece craftivism night

Hello lovelies

Today I'd like to talk to you about something rather serious (interspersed with photographs of ironic cake)- the Craftivism Collective I'm a Piece awareness campaign about the "Race Against Hunger" being run by Save the Children to highlight that 2.3 MILLION children a year are dying due to malnutrition. Two point three million. 

I became aware of the I'm A Piece campaign due to my bff Fran (aka Skulls and Ponies), who decided to organise an I'm a Piece event in Brighton; giving local crafty folk the chance to contribute towards raising awareness of this heart-wrenchingly awful problem. 

Brighton crafters getting their awareness on

I really like that the I'm a Piece campaign aims to raise awareness without
1. Asking people to put their hands in their pockets, or
2. Leaping out at unsuspecting pedestrians on their way to Paperchase and charming them with your Irish accent until they sign up to give £5 a month to lonely gorillas. Ahem. 
It's about people getting together to remember that hunger is still a very real factor in the lives of so many people across the globe. 

Cakes to fuel our craftivism about world hunger. Tasty, tasty irony. 

The idea is for each contributor to make three fabric jigsaw pieces; one for the Craftavist Collective, one to send to their MP, and one to keep as a reminder of the campaign. 

Brighton crafters joined forces over cups of tea to sew puzzle pieces for the #imapiece campaign. 

The Brighton event took place on Friday at the excellent Super + Super HQ. I really enjoyed the chance to meet up with some of lovely, local crafters including Tea, Cake and Make and Mini Patisserie. There was also lots of tea and cake which was slightly ironic given the cause we were supporting, but a craft night without cake is like Christmas without sparkly reindeer. I made a special jigsaw version of my lemon meringue cake to provide some energy for embroidering. 

"Solving hunger should be a piece of cake"

One of my three puzzle pieces

My final piece was slightly less eloquent than the others. 

If there aren't any I'm a Piece events going on in your area, or you want to take part at home, you'll need;

• A printed copy of the jigsaw piece template 
• Enough fabric for three jigsaw pieces. 
• Bondaweb/interfacing to make the pieces thicker (or sew two pieces of fabric together. 
• Needle/sewing machine and thread
• Thread/fabric pen/biro to write on your message (if you need some inspiration there's a list of ideas here).

Fran has also very helpfully written some tips for making perfect puzzle pieces. 

If you don’t have time to get your stitch on you can still sign the petition to encourage David Cameron to put hunger on the agenda for 2013. 

You can find out more on the Craftivist Collective website, through Save the Children, or by looking on twitter using the hashtag #imapiece 

Katie xxx