Manchester Day Parade enlisted the help and designs of Emily Wood, who ran a programme called Junk Jam alongside Global Grooves.

Junk Jam was about create carnival worthy costumes and instruments completely  out of recycled materials.
Global Grooves ran workshops to develop the music and dancing.

I was in the back helping with the costumes along with a fair few others from Embroidery.

Work started out pretty tedious and jobs included:
- making Suffolk puffs (left)
- cutting out butterflies and moths out of crisp packets
- tying up dresses for tie-dying
- crushing bottle tops






Then the next step was to bring all the components together and that's when it started getting more exciting.

- making 'junk' necklaces
- pinning things into position
- painting
- ripping
- sewing

The pictures to the right is the result of a hell of a lot of tea drinking!

The tea bags were an odd idea at first but added great texture and colours to the garments!





Then came the finishing touches and this piece to the right was my favourite! All those hours cutting out butterflies was well worth it in the end when I was asked to do the first skirt. I burnt my fingers a lot but it looked great...

Until... it was tested in the wind and the gluing that I'd done wasn't holding them in position and some were ripping off altogether.
So, they all needed going over again to make sure they were all secure...

...and then again on site because they'd fallen off again through being packed and unpacked.

I ended up hating the things.








This was a different section of the parade that Emily was working with as well, I don't know how she fit it all in!?

They were designs for really bright. bold skirts telling the story of the Divine Comedy.

It was silk painting and batik and it was very satisfying with the colours being so vibrant.







This was the end result for those designs (left). They were used as skirts/wings and the colours looked great!











And this was the overall feel of the Junk Jam / Global Grooves section of the parade. It was really exciting to see it all come together and great weather on the day!





For more information about the Manchester Day Parade: http://themanchesterdayparade.co.uk/

And information about Global Grooves and Emily Wood's involvement: http://www.globalgrooves.org/meet-the-team/delivery-team/emily-wood.aspx