Alessandra graduated with a MA in Fashion Design and is currently studying for a Master’s Degree in Artist Teacher Practice at Oxford Brookes University.

She has taught Art, Textiles and History of Art for over twenty years in local secondary schools, Bracknell & Wokingham College and South Hill Park.

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Unravel... autumn talk

The Menopause Scarf Project: Stitching ourselves together

Saturday 13 September, 10.30am in the Long Kiln

Can crocheting and making art help us through mid-life and its challenges? Can we connect with other women through textile art and use creativity as an act of activism and self-empowerment?

A talk about The Menopause Scarf Project and its findings so far and the artwork by Alessandra Rutili, a crochet artist leading the project and creating work in response to it.

“I use crocheting to create sculptures that narrate my personal experience of living through motherhood, hysterectomy, menopause and devoting my life to my family and students.

Running the Menopause Scarf Project has shown me that mine is not an isolated experience. The amazing ladies who took part inspired me and gave me the confidence to use my own voice to tell a story that is so common and yet so often unspoken and overlooked.

I choose to use crocheting as it has been a precious form of therapy and self-expression over my entire life and a way to build shapes that are evocative of the feminine, domesticity and gender roles.

I can create 3D forms in an intuitive way, without patterns or plans and only using a hook and yarn, the way a sculptor might build in clay.”