Recovery, resilience and stitchery: How quilting saved my life

 

Recovery Quilt 1: Let Go

This is my article in the July/August edition of Embroidery Magazine.  Many thanks to editor Jo Hall for allowing me to republish this

2016/17 was a bad year for me; our house suffered a major flood and the subsequent refit was handled so badly that we had to get my MP and the financial ombudsman involved; family members were very seriously ill; there was a row that alienated me from my family for a year.  When a professional disappointment happened after working on it for 18 months I crumpled; I buckled; I went under.

I was in a very dark place.  In the past when I had been in rough spots, my practice had always been the safety valve.  I had repeatedly used metaphor as a way to express my thoughts.  Symbolic animals running for their lives; blocks of dark colours overpowering ambiguous shapes. This time it was different.  I had ‘maker's block’. I couldn’t work and felt like I was looking into a void.  Writer William Stryon, compared depression to being “imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room”[1], but for me it was a crushing sensation.  I felt overwhelmed by the weight of failure; I couldn’t breathe.  Not like a panic attack but as if all the oxygen was being squeezed out of me.

I had been doing some mentoring for the Crafts Council as part of their Parallel Practice residencies with thread based artist Angela Maddocks.  As the project drew to an end we agreed to continue with a reciprocal agreement to mentor each other.  It took a number of months to actually admit how ‘stuck’ I was.  By now I was on anti-depressants and in a talking therapy programme but I still had nothing to work on.  In a conversation with Angela I found myself ranting about all sorts of things ranging from the aftermath of the flood, politics, a perceived lack of success and homophobia I had suffered twenty years earlier and Angela said in a neighbourly way ‘Oooo. What are you going to do with all that anger?’ as if it was a tangible thing; something that could be picked up and carried and moulded into something else.

And I didn’t have an answer but those words buzzed around my head like a bluebottle in a jam jar.  As it circled in my brain I repeatedly asked myself ‘What will you do with your anger?’

In the previous five years I had done commissions exploring leukaemia and blood disorders, cardiology and residencies looking at crippling bone diseases or working with prosthetic limbs.  It was heavy going.  My colour palette had gone from richly saturated hues to dark, dour monochrome. Whilst my work wasn’t making me ill it certainly hadn’t been helping.

So I decided I would work with colour again. Bright, vivid colour.  It didn’t matter what I made, but it would be for me.  It wasn’t for a client, or a community, or in response to someone else’s brief.  There would be no serious story to tell; it would be for my own pleasure; it would be about the joy of just making.  And then it became apparent that what I needed to do was to make a quilt that asked in joyful colours ‘What will you do with your anger?’

Two weeks later at sewing show I bought a pack of charms (5 inch squares) of Japanese Yuzen fabric.  They were perfect; a confection of jewel like colours, cherry blossom and chrysanthemums, flying cranes and patterned fans, all laced with fine golden print.  To start with I was hesitant.  I hadn’t made for nearly a year.  I collaged with photocopies of the fabric but I rapidly dived in.

There were only two rules.  ‘Technically slick’ and ‘Choose the more joyful option’.

Letters were digitised from scratch, sometimes with puddles of metallic thread stitched in splatters alongside, then stitched onto blocks that were pieced and freemotion quilted. When faced with an aesthetic dilemma the solution was simple; go for the joyful option.

And it worked.  The simple act of making for myself, not the audience, helped me rebuild myself.  I wasn’t over thinking the process, just doing, trying to swim in the happiness of pinks, yellows and turquoise.  Of course this wasn’t just the quilts that bought about my recovery but they were emblematic of the journey back.

Considering I was making them for me and no one else, they have been exceptionally well received.  The first two are currently on a European tour and the third was commended on the shortlist for the Vlieseline Fine Art Textile Award in 2018. Another three sit in pieces in my studio and I have made three quilts as a personal response to Covid. I don’t know when I will get to show them but at the moment that doesn’t matter.  When collectors wanted to buy the very first Recovery Quilt I realised I couldn’t let it go and made them another version.  The irony is that quilt’s title is ‘Let go’.  Its too precious to me because of the emotional significance in the blocks of bright blossoms, swirls and splatters of gold. I’ll never let that one go.

Two of Karina’s quilts are part of the Quilt Art touring exhibitions Material Evidence and Traces

Museum De Kantfabriek, Horst, the Netherlands, 2nd May - 26th September 2021
Handwerksmuseum, Deggendorf, Germany, end of November 2021 - March 2022

Vänermuseet, Lidköping, Sweden, 1 - 30 September 2021

 

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[1] Darkness Visible, Vanity Fair, December 1989

#patchoflove

 

The #patchoflove project is a direct, personal response to the third lockdown.  I know that many people are finding things really tough; the weather is bad; the novelty and fear of the first lockdown has well and truly gone; new variants and initial doubts of when any of us would get the jabs (and would they work?) seemed to build anxiety and uncertainty.  I am married to a front line NHS worker who at least three times a week was up on the ITU at the QE Hospital in Birmingham, the busiest ITU in the UK, dressed up like an astronaut, and I can see in real terms the effect that a year of pressure can do to someone.

But I am an embroiderer.  Yes I could do something for the local foodbank or support my elderly neighbour  like another human being (and I do) but I wanted to find a way to use this specialist skill in a positive way.  On the first lockdown I hung a quilt in my front window declaring ‘Stay Safe’. Now many of you will know that I am a recent convert to Northern Soul and before the pandemic had begun to collect the fabric patches associated with the genre; I had begun to make my own and signing off my quilts with a defiant fist holding a pair of scissors with the caption ‘Quilter ‘til I Die’ reminiscent of a Northern Soul patch.

I had begun to play around with a ‘Stay Safe, Stay Strong’ message on one of my patches before I was in the audience for the In conversation between Craftspace’s Deirdre Figueiredo and the legendary Craftivist Betsy Greer.  I was familiar with Craftivism and Betsy’s work but hadn’t really given it considered thought relating to my practice before.  And it was a light bulb moment.  I could make a patch telling people to Stay safe and Stay strong and give them to people who might be struggling in some way

And well that’s what I did.  I had some technical problems as I was embroidering in a way that I hadn’t before but after a couple of trials, I think that’s been sorted.

And so I have begun to leave them in spaces where I think that someone who might appreciate the equivalence of a pat on the back or a socially distanced hug because they are low. Entrances to hospitals and bus stops seem like good starting points.  I know that it’s a small, tiny gesture and I am sure some will think that it’s a waste of my time, but do you know what its makes me feel that I am doing something and its my time to waste.

If you don’t think I am wasting my time please DM me through Twitter or Instagram @karinaworld2

Thanks for reading.  Keep the Faith

The Covid Quilts: Part 2

We all know that the last 6 months have been tough.  I am married to a front line NHS worker so we had been following the growth of this illness for some time.  It was clear that things were going to be bad from mid February.  I had read stories of what was happening in the hospitals of Northern Italy and could see it was only a matter of time before it was over here.  Nicky was battling with getting decent PPE and the right to wear it on wards with coughing patients still waiting for a diagnosis taking days to come through.

I was still teaching at Hereford College of Arts.  The last day before lockdown, as I walked to the station I overheard two students behind me talking; they talked about how they wouldn’t mind getting ‘IT’ because they could do with ‘a bit of a skive’.  I was so angry I couldn’t turn to look at them.  They were young and naïve but I thought of the older people in their lives and how they might be affected by the illness.

Nicky led from the front and was one of the first of her team to dress up like an astronaut and go onto ITU. She works in cardiology and Covid does horrible things to your heart; echocardiograms were in high demand.  The first time she went up there she said it was like a war zone; she was clearly shaken; she stopped talking about what was going on during the 12 hour shifts day and night.

I was at home feeling fairly helpless.  I am zooming away to my students from Hereford trying to keep them positive and working, but in comparison to what Nicky was doing it felt very small. 

I am a quilter; that’s what I do.  So I decided to quilt and this piece is the result.

I started with a simple ‘Stay Safe’ and then another for my sister, but I knew that I wanted to make a bigger more considered piece.

It says what I wanted to say to those two young people.

 

 

The Covid Quilts: Part 1

The first half of the year has been an unusual one for us all.   When lockdown finally happened I had already witnessed my partner, Nicky,  trying to plan for the oncoming storm for at least 4 weeks; I had read the stories of the overwhelmed hospitals in Northern Italy; my brother was locked down in Southern Spain; it was clear it was going to be bad.

 

Many of you will know that Nicky works in Cardiology and specifically Echocardiology (ultrasounds of the heart).  The procedure is a 40 minute, intimate scan that is on a par to cuddling the patient.  In the run up to lockdown she told tales of scanning coughing patients dressed only in a plastic apron and gloves because although they were symptomatic they were undiagnosed because the test results were taking 6 days to come back; at that point the hospital would not let staff wear masks unless there was a confirmed diagnosis.  The guidelines on PPE kept changing and it was a constant battle for her and her team.  She was fitted for the special masks that were for use on the Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU) and began to talk about 12 hour shifts working around the clock.  The hospital was adding extra beds to ITU and converting operating theatres to additional ITU wards; work started on the Nightingale Hospital at the NEC.  I know it was tough on her kitting up (they call it donning and doffing) and going onto the wards dressed in the full gear; she stopped talking about what she saw.

And what was I doing?  I was working from home (and then furloughed) for the sewing machine distributors of Pfaff and Husqvarna Viking that I provide technical support for.  My three days a week at Hereford College of Art went onto zoom tutorials and seminars trying to reassure students that it was all going to be okay.  Whilst this was really important, it was not the life and death experience that Nicky was going through. 

It was scary.  I felt impotent.

I am a quilter; so I made a quilt

I found myself chanting the message ‘Stay Safe’ whenever she or I went out.  On the back of the earlier Recovery Quilts it seemed a logical step to make a Covid Quilt saying that.  I wanted to sew something that was as positive and joyous as possible and hang it in as public a place.

The first quilt was made very quickly and I taped it into the front window so people walking past could see it.  Technically its unfinished as its still a quilt top only.  I will admit that it was actually sellotaped in place.  The second, more considered version is quilted and hangs in my sister’s front window on the busy street in Hove she lives on.  Annoyingly her quilt is much better than mine.

Singing Quilts:All the things you are not yet

My Singing Quilt, ‘All the things you are not yet’ features a mobile phone photograph of two pre-implantation embryos digitally printed onto cotton.  This fabric has been embroidered with conductive threads to make fabric speakers that play a sound file of those embryos, now 5 years old boys, singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’  The soft circuits have been designed that the sound file is triggered when the quilt is touched.  Because the speakers are made from fabric the sound has a faint, ghost like quality and you need to put your head near the quilt to hear it.  This means the experience for the viewer is both interactive and intimate.

This was made with the help of the Centre for Robotics Research, Kings College London.

Recovery Quilts: The path back

Recovery Quilt 3 : Out of the dirt, 2019, approx 180x120cms

I’ve been on a bumpy road lately.  Challenging things have happened to me and those around me.

It left me in a dark place.  

Whilst I have been working, it’s been on project work.  I hadn’t done a piece of personal studio work for about two and a half years.  In the past my studio practice has always been the safety valve; a way to vent the pressure.  But this time I couldn’t work; I was blank; I was empty; I lost my way.

As part of the journey, back I decided to make a quilt; a comforter.  It was the action of making that was to be the important bit.  It was a private thing.  There was no ‘story’ to tell. I wasn’t thinking of you, the audience, just myself as a maker.  Think of it as a displacement activity.  The main criterion was it was to be joyous.  When faced with a design choice I had to choose the more joyful option; to go for a trumpet blare of colour rather than the sludgy monochrome I have been submerged in.

And I wanted it to be technically slick.  Contained, flat with very accurate stitchery.  Some might say it’s out of character.

But at the same time, I don’t want these ‘Recovery Quilts’ to be bland ‘fridge magnet’ quilts with insipid inspirational quotes.  The words are very personal to me.  The texts have been chanted in my head the whole time; my mantras for getting through.

The piece above is Recovery Quilt 3 : Out of the dirt.  It has been shortlisted for the Vlieseline Fine Art Textiles Award, one of the most prestigious textile competitions in Europe.  It will be on show at Festival of Quilts NEC Birmingham 1-4^th August.  I can't explain how great that has made me feel.  

Recovery Quilt 3: Out of the dirt.  detail of digital embroidery and applique.