The embroidery project healing the pain of March 15, sews by point

Alex Casey talks to women behind 51 Threads, a community art project that helps people affected by the attacks of the Christchump mosque.

In the weeks prior to March 15, 2019, Noraini Milne began to use a white Telekung, or a prayer piece, when he participated in the Al-Noor mosque in Christchurs. “In the masjid, you will always see donated prayer clothes and suitable dress for people to wear,” she explains. “I liked this one.” Embroidered with a delicate floral pattern around the cut edges, the borrowed Telekung was still being used by Milne Abbas when she fled the mosque during the terrorist attack that killed 51 Muslim lives, including her own 14 -year -old Sayyad.

Although she still doesn’t know who Telekung belonged to, the clothes took off a new life six years later. Tight by hand by Abbas Milne in honor of his son, now he cites a verse of the Quran that calmed the darker day of New Zealand: “Never think of those martyred in the cause of Allah as dead,” reads in Arabic. “In fact, they are alive with their Lord and well foreseen.” Having hung on the gallery walls and civic halls, the piece is just one of the dozens created for the 51 thread connection, a embroidery project helping to heal people affected by the attacks.

The origins of the project trace to 2022, when Abbas Milne founded the community organization sowed a Lyttel seed alongside Lyttelton Cathy Lum-Webb Lyttelton’s local. “For me, being the only Muslim family in a small community, it proved to return to people in Lyttelton who supported me,” says Abbas Milne. The Lyttel Seed Facebook page, released February 7, 2022 – Sayyad’s birthday. Soon hosting local planting events, volleyball games and futsal competitions, the group’s kaupapa is simple: “Healing Heal, growing together.”

It was a year after Abbas Milne had the idea of ​​51 topics. “Sayyad always wanted to be a professional soccer player and, of course, I can’t do that,” she laughs. “But I still wanted to honor your legacy with the things I can do, and the embroidery is my favorite – even if I didn’t do much.” Through the broader Christchury Muslim community, she was soon connected with Philippa Dye, who was taught embroidering by her grandmother at the age of four and took the opportunity to help those in the community get a needle and a wire.

To keep things simple and the overall appearance cohesive, they made useful kits with a limited color palette: white cloth to represent purity, blue wire to represent vivid tiles on many mosques abroad, green wires to represent the summit on the prophet’s tomb and a sunny yellow wire because it was the favorite color of Sayyad. Dye even managed to get a “massive discount” in Lynncraft supplies in Bush Inn. “I talked to the manager about it and he said ‘give me a minute’, touched her great boss, and that’s it,” she smiles.

The community’s first event was held at the Lyttelton community space as part of the unit week in 2024. “March 15 should not be forgotten, so we asked everyone to return to that day and choose a word to reflect,” says Abbas Milne. Local Sudi Dargipour expert, who also created the Lyttel seed logo, then translated the word into Arabic and drew it on his cloth as a guide. The selected words included hope, peace, faith, kindness and energy. One woman chose “silent tears” and embroidered the sentence in a handkerchief.

Participants managed to take their pieces home to continue working, but were also invited to meet periodically with Sow a Lyttel seed team at hand to help. “Many people who were doing them had never taken a needle before, so we wanted to give them everything they needed,” explains the dye. “I love the range of skills and emotions that there are some of them very raw, and I needed to do a lot of work on their back to make them tidy up. But that’s fine, because they came from the heart.”

While also learning a new craft, the soft focus required during embroidery also had a therapeutic effect. “It was relaxing to do this,” said one participant, “you feel you are doing a meditation and just focusing on work without thinking about anything else.” Dye chose the word “unit” for his piece. “I was really focusing on where we are as a country, how amazing it was when we all advanced later and what we can learn from it,” she says. For Abbas Milne, it was “a healing journey” to embroider the Telekung she wore that day.

“Definitely helped.” She says. “Some of the projects we did to other people, but this one really went to me.”

Since the works were completed and assembled, they were exhibited in ōtautahi several times and traveled to Tāmaki Makauu last year. Next week, ABBAS Milne Telekung will be part of the next exhibition Pupuria: Narrative and Contemporary Tissues in Objectspace in the Auckland Center. They are receiving orders everywhere, from Palmerston North to Alexandra, and aiming to ensure more funding to bring the collection abroad to connect with affected families who have left ōtautah in their sadness.

It has also become organically a space for people to reflect on those who have lost throughout their lives. “Everyone who comes to the exhibition, they have their own reason,” says Abbas Milne. When 51 Threads visited Motuka late last year, Lum-Webb resembles a woman who told them in silence, who was there to regret the recent death of her son. “She said the space was somewhere she could feel safe with everyone, because that was her personal mourning, losing someone in her own life,” she says. “This really opened a new level of conversation and this feeling of people being together.”

Dye agrees that the project forged a deeper sense of connection to her – particularly with the women with whom she became close friend as a result of lending her sewing skills. “This is creating something beautiful from something very, very ugly,” she says. The next phrase she is sewing is a “Brotherhood” translation in Arabic. “I did a huge service, especially for women, to recover this sense of brotherhood,” she says. “Today we are all so busy, always stuck in our phones, and we don’t even find our neighbors. People need to be more curious with each other, you know?

“Get out and ask questions, and you will realize how common we all have.”