Looking forward to being at the Royal Institution

We're really chuffed to be part of the Royal Institution's Family Fun Day on 9 June. If you like fabric, engineering and fun science stuff then come along. We'll have the tent on the go and will also be talking about fabric, materials and buildings in the theatre.


If you're an engineer in London and want to help out on the stall just get in touch and let us know. We're keen to hear from any engineers with an interest in structures, tensile structures and material use in buildings. No knitting experience required - it's easy to learn and there will be crafters on hand to sort things out when visitors get a bit carried away and lose track of where they are. We can pay your travel expenses and we'll also treat you to cups of tea and a slice of cake too. Actually - we can run to lunch too if that helps!

Big thanks to the M Shed in Bristol for hosting the canopy over the last week. If you got to see it we hope you liked it.

The tensile structure takes shape...

We've had a very productive couple of days at the M Shed in Bristol. Big thanks to structural engineers Rachael and Eleanor from Arup and Jenni (independent structural engineer)! We spent two days talking all things structures while making, creating and building. We talked load paths, foundations, tension, compression, properties of materials and lots, lots more. It was great to see our chum Fabrice along too helping out on a couple of the other engineering stalls.

Attaching a rather fetching green infill panel.

If you want to see and touch the canopy pop along to the M Shed where it will be displayed until Sunday 26 May. We are looking for more infill panels too. So if you fancy making a square or rectangle we'd love to see your handiwork. So far we've been using knitting looms for the panels as these create a quite open, stretchy fabric. But we're happy with hand knitted, crocheted, woven or felted squares of any colour. Pop any squares along to the M Shed or get in touch with Helen for a postal address / arrange collection.

It's all rather colourful isn't it?

One visitor suggested it would make a great tent for Snowflake (a much-loved toy dog). Who else might like to live or shelter in a colourful, woolly canopy structure?

Next stop: the Royal Institution's next Family Fun Day 9 June.

Join us at the M Shed!

We're very much looking forward to being at the M Shed on 18 and 19 May. We're teaming up with myfuturemychoice for their Immersive Week. There should be lots of fun engineering things going on with activities led by pupils or engineers as well as displays, lectures and workshops. Come along to see how the canopy is developing, craft a loop or two and find out how fabrics, making and materials play their parts in structural engineering.

Don't forget, if you want to help with the stall - get in touch with Helen helen2(dot)featherstone(at)uwe(dot)ac(dot)uk or call on 0117 3283919.