Concept – Patterns – Sign Up – Important Information – send us your creations
THE CONCEPT
To illustrate the scale of forced adoptions and forced family separation which took place from the mid 1940s to the late 1980s, we want to collect 500,000 baby booties (Half a Million Bootees).
Bootees can be knitted, crocheted, drawn, painted or represented in some other way, such as in photos, collage, model or sculpture. The only restriction for artwork is the size: Baby bootees are small, so artwork should be no more than 4 ins to 6 ins square (approximately 10cm to 15cm square).
We would be grateful if knitted and crocheted bootees could be made of yarn in white, or pastel shades of blue or pink.
Patterns
If you are an experienced knitter, you may already have one or more Bootee patterns. With kind permission from the publishers, we are able to offer designs from the post-war 1950s era.
We hope to gather most of the bootees we need by late Summer / Autumn 2026.
This gives everyone enough time to knit, crochet, sew or get creative in some other way.
Sign up!
If you want to be part of this project, please sign up here.
We’ll ask for your basic contact details so we can send you more information as this ambitious concept takes shape.
Send us your creations!
If you have already made some bootees and want to send them to us, please send us an email requesting the address.
Important!
NB. PLEASE DO NOT send bootees, artwork or photos to our office address as we may not receive them.
VERY IMPORTANT: Owing to the scale of this project, we won’t be able to track each contribution so it will not be possible to return your contributions. SO PLEASE DO NOT send us anything which is important to you, or has sentimental value.
If you know of a gallery which may be willing to host our unique installation, please send us the details.
Thank you for helping to make this possible.
Concept – Patterns – Sign Up – Important Information – send us your creations
