Blooming Marvellous!
Creating Glorious Daffodils for Marie Curie Cancer Care
When Marie Curie Cancer Care approached our fashion students to help them create a daffodil head for their fundraisers to wear, the students were so inspired by the worthy cause and the creative challenge of the project that they produced not one, but two stunning designs, ready to turn heads wherever the collectors are in action.
The new daffodil heads were presented to Brian Curran, Marie Curie’s Area Fundraising Manager for West Yorkshire, at the Yorkshire Craft Centre on 12th March.
Brian explained, “For the last ten years we have had a daffodil head worn by our volunteers. We found the attention this attracted brought much more money into the charity, particularly in supermarkets. It used to be bright but has grown dingy and rather tattered, so I came to Alison with the old head and invited the students to come up with an alternative for our volunteers to wear.”
National Diploma in Fashion & Clothing Course Tutor, Alison Wesley, added “Working on this live brief really challenged the students, as it had to be decorative and very structural but comfortable to wear. They made up the colours themselves and procion printed them to get the speckled effects. One hat is hand beaded while the other is more appliqué and machine embroidered. As well as overcoming technical issues, the project enabled them to develop skills of working together and compromise. It has taken a few months as they only had Friday afternoons to work on it, but they have been very self-directed. They really had a ball with it and I am so proud of them.”
Brian was amazed and delighted with the headdresses. “I am hoping to involve the College in more fundraising projects. The students’ work will be seen by thousands of people so the College and everyone benefits from raising more money to support their local hospice and help the people of Bradford.”
The beaded headdress was created by Zoe Drake, Kyonie Howard, Aarti Mistry, Hamerra Sadiq and Kate Sidebottom. The appliqué headdress was created by Lisa Barber, Lubna Jahangir, Catherine Msadala, Rory Somers, Masuma Sultana and Rebecca Welsby. The headdresses were modelled for the occasion by students, Kate Jennings and Georgina McCrum.
You can see the daffodil designs being realised here
You can see images from the presentation event here