Balloons Everywhere

~ Rag Bag Mending

Would it be possible to make a physical collaborative art project, when all the participants are spread around the country? And what if meeting up in person just wasn’t possible?

A large fabric banner, being displayed in a garden. It's a large expanse of sky blue, with a whole host of hot air balloons, filling the sky. There are more than 20 of them, in all manner of colours and shapes and sizes, made from a whole range of different materials, wool, paper and fabric. At the very bottom there are green fields, with a single, partially inflated balloon, preparing for take off.

I’m part of a group called Creative-ish. We meet regularly online to chat about creativity and faith and how we combine the two. We work on and share our own creative stuff, mainly, but we’ve collaborated on some online projects too. There’s been a collective psalm we wrote together on zoom and some photo montages created via Facebook. I started wondering what it might be like to collaborate on something physical together. This wall hanging is the result.

A selection of balloons sewn onto a sky coloured backing fabric. There's a photo montage full of nature photographs, framed like a stained glass window. There's a fabric collage balloon, with bright colours, a flamboyant gold trim, and 2 people waving from the basket. There's a paper collage balloon with a bold sunflower in the centre. There's a rainbow striped balloon, made with paint on fabric. At the bottom of the image is a half inflats balloon, preparing, we hope, for take off.
A close up of balloons on the wall hanging. One is made from carrier bags, decorated with felt pen zig zags, one is crochet. One is a brightly coloured design of solid squares and patterns, printed onto fabric. Two small balloons were done with biros and a Spirograph toy.

We settled on a theme that gave us lots of scope to express ourselves. Hot air balloons have such a sense of delight and freedom to them. I drew up some guidelines so that what we made would (hopefully) work together, then people went away and made their balloons, and posted them to me. I had the most AMAZING post, that month! Each package that arrived had a creative delight in it, often with stories of what thoughts and ideas went into the making of the balloon.

Moments of beauty from a daily walk are represented here, and much loved friends. There’s a ministry-supporting elephant in balloon form, and there are “My kids asked what I was doing, and now they want to make balloons as well, is that ok?” balloons. There’s a Terry Pratchett quote that made someone cry (me, that was me). There’s a kintsugi inspired “mended with gold” balloon and one with a specially written poem, that can be read in two different directions.

A close up of another 3 balloons on the wall hanging. There's another Spirograph balloon, one which is a hand drawn pattern of shaped and colours, on fabric, and a third which uses fabric from a pair of rainbow leggings, with a hole in them mended in cold thread, and embroidered stars.

Another selection of balloons. Two are hand drawn in rainbow stripes on paper. There's a ballon shaped like an elephant made from brightly coloured fabric scraps, with an ear that flaps in the breeze. There's a silver balloon made from the metallic stuff that helium balloons are made from. There's a padded balloon in purple velvet, and

There are balloons made from paper and fabric and photos. There are old socks, carrier bags, egg boxes and hand dyed scraps from an old school shirt. There are Spirograph balloons and crochet balloons, hand drawn balloons and printed ones. There’s even a balloon made from balloons.

I made a balloon of my own, but my main job was to bring all the others together. I found an old cotton sheet in a charity shop and dyed it to look like a sky with wispy clouds in. I thought I’d get maybe 6 or possibly as many as10 balloons, if I was really lucky. I thought I’d use maybe a third or half of the sheet. More and more balloons kept arriving, (26 in total!) and I ended up using pretty much the whole sheet. The wall hanging is enormous! My trusty sewing machine went through all sorts of different substances, with only a couple of glitches.

Two more balloons. One has white and dark pink vertical stripes, curving round the shape of the balloon and an egg box based basket. The second it tiny fabric scraps patch-worked together with the embroidered words "Learn to fly. Do it now"
A handful more balloons, sewn onto the sky. There's a crochet balloon, a striped balloon made from old socks, with a butter pot basket. There are three fabric balloons with words embroidered on to them, one of which was a poem on it (not legible in the photo) and there's a tiny balloon completely covered in embroidery in dark jewel colours

A few of the balloons needed a little modifying before they could be attached, and that led to some fun technical challenges. One balloon, partially inflated and attempting to leave the ground, caused a lot of rethinking, because all of a sudden I needed some ground for it to take off from. That led to green fabric hills, and embroidered words on them, capturing some of the values of our community. The whole project is the better for that unexpected arrival.

As experiments go, I’d call it a success, both in the outcome and in how much I learnt by doing it.

A few final thoughts.

  • It’s a thing of great joy, which represents some people I care a great deal about. I love the way that, if you know the people involved, it’s so utterly obvious who did which balloon. They are as unique as their makers.
  • It’s a thing so ridiculously big, I don’t know what to do with it. That’s a problem I hadn’t foreseen. (I’m open to suggestions on that one.)
  • It feels like it needs some sort of launch event or unveiling, but we’re spread all over the country so I don’t know what that looks like. (Open to suggestions on that one too!)
  • It’s stretched my technical skills, which is always fun. I’ve also done a lot of thinking about how to make a group project like this work well in practice, and to how to make it as easy as possible for people take part. Still more thinking to do on that one. All working in the same physical space would definitely make some things easier.
  • More than anything, I’ve realised that although I love being creative myself, I get even more joy from supporting and drawing out the creativity of others. I’d be delighted to do more projects like this. (Very very much open to, yes, you’ve guessed it, suggestions here too!)
The wall hanging has been somehow suspended from the top shelf of a book shelf. It starts very close to the ceiling and reaches most of the way down to the floor. A middle aged woman in patchwork trousers is stretching up next to it, trying to stop it from falling onto the floor. A small cat walks past, unaware of the risk of balloon fall.
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Published by Rag Bag Mending

5 thoughts on “Balloons Everywhere”

  3. “More than anything, I’ve realised that although I love being creative myself, I get even more joy from supporting and drawing out the creativity of others.”

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  4. Oops! I didn’t finish the comment!!! It should be,

    “More than anything, I’ve realised that although I love being creative myself, I get even more joy from supporting and drawing out the creativity of others.”

    I think this sums up all that is at the very core of you, Claire.

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