It is a hat trick. The Mother India Crochet Queen (MICQ) has broken a world record for the third time in a row: this time it displayed the world’s largest collection of crochet sculptures at SRM University campus on January 21.
The record was adjudicated by Swapnil Dangarika of Guinness World Records, London.
“We broke the record by assembling 58,917 crochet sculptures (beating Great Britain’s record of 13,348 crochet sculptures in 2014). All were made by members of MICQ across the world,” says Subhashri Natarajan, founder of the crochet club.
The Crochet Queens club, which began in 2015, broke the Guinness World Record for the largest crochet blanket in 2015. The blanket, made by more than 2,000 Indian women from all over the world, measured 11,148 square metres. In May 2017, they made the world’s longest crocheted scarf: 14.089 kilometres in total. This year, they decided to focus on making the world’s largest collection of crocheted 3D sculptures in the form of Amigurumis, which are small crocheted dolls.
Based the theme, ‘Go Green, Save Earth,’ the group’s regional heads alloted items to respective teams with instuctions on what needed to be made, and how to do it. In an earlier story in The Hindu , Mallika Natarajan, the Mumbai regional coordinator, said any type of hook, yarn, thread or wire could be used for the sculpture, but it needed to be made with crochet. “This will be a great challenge, and an interesting one too,” she said, adding, “Not only will our creativity get a boost but we will be making our generation as well as the next one aware of how to save the earth.”
Entries were divided into two sections: thematic and random. Pollution in the ocean, alternative energy sources, solar energy, science and food were some of the topics covered. Work for this began five months ago, and all the sculptures were sent to the founder of MICQ. “Every Sunday, members in Chennai would come together and fix the sculptures sent to us on a display board. Over a period of five months, we worked towards this event,” says Natarajan. On January 20, the adjudicator and his team manually counted entries from 5 pm to 11 pm. The number was verified again the next day and only then was the record announced.
A total of 720 members of the club participated in this challenge. About 532 of them were from India, while the other 188 live overseas.
The crochet sculptures have been donated to 13 Rotary Clubs in Chennai, and they in turn will distribute them to Government schools. The club’s next step is to launch an Acharya programme through which they plan to teach crochet in schools, colleges and communities.
And their next project? The crochet queens now plan to make warm cowls and caps for soldiers stationed at the border. They will be knitting these in olive green and plan to hand them over to the Army in January 2019.
