Securing Your Boundaries....

I had been thinking of putting a fine line of Fevicol to bind the edges of the cross- stitch matte.  Despite telling myself each time I picked up the piece to embroider that I must do it at the end of the session, I'd invariably forget. I'd pack everything away carefully without protecting the edges from fraying. And the moment I picked it up the next day, I'd tell myself the exact same thing and forget, each time, in exactly the same way!

Once I had settled down to stitch, it was tedious to get up, put aside the many coloured skeins I had sorted out for the embroidery session – put the needle back into the fabric, go into the next room, hunt for the Fevicol tube and do the needful and then start the ritual of getting started all over again! Not to forget that the viscous solution of Fevicol would need time to dry. And this meant that the precious time I had set aside to sew that evening would be lost. No excuse really. More than laziness, it was the careless chalta hai attitude of “I’ll deal with it when it happens.”

The ritual of reminding myself, doing the embroidery and then putting it away, invariably without doing the needful, had gone on for days now. Predictably, as I was working on the same cross-stitch one evening, the threads at the edge of the matte started fraying. It was the insertion of the needle - a tad too close to the cut edge that was the culprit. But even so, I had known well enough that it would happen one day, but I had been careless nonetheless.

The threads were coming un-done.  This meant that the edge of the work, to which I was giving  finishing touches, would look rather ungainly. I was thinking this, chiding myself for not having put the Fevicol, and hating the idea of the wonky-edged cross-stitch. Almost in the same instant, as if by some ingrained reflex, I then used the very same needle to hold the fraying threads together.

Using the same cross-stitch technique that I was working to embroider the fabric with, using the same needle that had caused a fragile edge to fall apart, made me stop and think. It was a curious fact that I couldn't escape from:  the needle that pierces also repairs and even embellishes.... eventually. And equally curious was the idea that the technique by which I was embellishing the fabric was the same that I had used to repair the edge - doing my jogaad (make-shift repair). It wasn't just a repair of fraying fabric that I'd put into place. The stitch also allowed me to continue with the planned embroidery - as if the fraying hadn't even taken place. At least you couldn't tell unless you scrutinized the edge very closely. Only I knew of the damage.

Well, maybe an expert eye could detect it, but the kind of frayed work I was doing these days, it would pass muster.

I stopped doing the embroidery. I mean this sewing session was laden with meaning, I couldn't continue. I was distracted. I started thinking of the numerous instances when someone or some situation that had hurt me, had also been the catalyst for growth, change and more in the same vein.

It's not easy to deal with this rather paradoxical nature of life and I for one, can never really figure out how to deal with such things. Should I not be wary of the sharpness of the needle? Should one overlook its intrinsically violent nature, to only embrace the beauty that unfolds through its piercing of the fabric? No matter how beautiful the end-result, dealing with an instrument that tenaciously carries its thread in and out of the fabric, generating pain along the way, is a complex affair.

 The needle follows a charted course (sometimes not quite drawn on the fabric but guided by the unfolding design) - unwavering in its stance, oblivious to the silent trauma of the fabric.

If I consider myself the fabric, I know that I cannot forget the pain. And yet we do. That is, until the same sort of thing occurs again. And then it's almost as if a well has been uncorked, where the pain is felt all the more with each recurrence. It makes me wary of those people and circumstances that recur with them. Setting those boundaries can be a difficult thing.

I had known from experience that unless I protected the fragile edges, secured the boundary as it were, the threads would come apart. But I'd continued inserting the needle through those fragile threads for days together - forgetting to put the Fevicol that would bind and protect them. I hadn't taken the precautions - the fabric had to fall apart. It wasn't the fabric that was intrinsically fragile. In an unprotected state, I had carelessly subjected it to repeated piercing by that sharp, pointed needle - causing it to fray.

There was no-one to blame but myself. Again a loaded reminder that if one doesn't take cognisance of those fragile edges of ones being, doing what's needed to keep the equilibrium and set boundaries,  things will inevitably fall apart. Just like the threads of the matte did that night. And these repairs are not always as seamless as my embroidery work......

An Awkward Marriage.....

 

 I started using copper wire in my textile pieces around 2004. It was then an adjunct to frame the fabrics, lending strength to cloth I had taken apart thread by thread and rendered virtually thread

-bare.

I moved away from this practice. I found it laborious even then to work with the wire. But, after a gap of many years, around March this year, I decided to pick it up again - using the same copper wire to embroider with. It was awkward to say the least. Earlier, it was intended as a support for the fragile nature of fabric I had created, this time I tried to integrate it into the fabric structure itself.
 

Although it is relatively malleable as far as most wire is concerned, this copper wire is still tough to work with - to get it to do what I want. It goes all over the place, reminding me of how difficult it can be dealing with people who are WIRED differently.
 

When I stopped trying to control the gleaming russet wire, its wilful meanderings brought elements into play that thread could never do and started me thinking.....

I have persisted with many ghastly results but slowly we are finding a way to make things work. Or so I think...  ..!

Compared to needle and thread which is delicate and so amenable, the copper wire makes these grand but clumsy sweeps. I don't use a needle. It works as needle and thread in one, but its point is not as sharp as a needle, so it isn't easy to penetrate the layers of fabric that I like to work with.

I won’t blame anyone for thinking its sacrilege to add this rather crass, awkwardly meandering thread alongside the delicate Kantha and chain stitch. I am in two minds about it myself.

 

 It takes a lot of work to marry their disparate elements but there's also something about the wire, which sort of eggs me on to keep working with it, despite the awkwardness.

I let the wire thread its gauche way through the fabric and then I spend hours covering its naked audacity with floss, using a half hitch knot[i], which is similar to a buttonhole stitch, except that the latter catches a loop of the thread on the surface of the fabric, while the half-hitch knot is traditionally used without a needle to secure some object with rope to a hitching post. Anyway the process of covering this wire with three strands of untwisted embroidery floss takes forever and the thread gets so twisted that I cannot continue. So I have to turn the piece upside down, let it hang a bit, to let the twisted thread unwind, then get it back up again and start the process all over again.

I liken this, to what I feel myself, when life is challenging and it seems that I have to stand upside down, to be able sort it all out.

 

When I stand upside-down the whole world is perfect.

It’s when I have my feet on the ground

that everything looks upside down.

 

I have to admit that working with the wire has been getting to me of late - not quite enjoying it as much as when I started out.
 

The gawky gestures of the copper wire are alien to the delicacy of stitch, yet also evocative of some part of me that is restless, impatient and insecure, wanting to live larger than life, even if it’s just occasionally so, before I am brought down to earth with a thud.

And it happened one Sunday evening six weeks ago, on 30^th June to be precise, when I collapsed after a swim, shivering with a sudden rise in temperature to 103 degrees. I panicked, more at the fact that in the middle of a summer evening’s temperature of 38 degrees Celsius, I lay under a light Jaipuri quilt, without a fan on, my teeth chattering, while everyone around me, in the same room, had sweat pouring down their cheeks. To add to my consternation, even my yoga teacher had left a message, earlier in the day, to say that I should take it easy with the regimen.

Things had been hectic and I was exhausted, but I thought: it can't me more than that. Anyway, I went through the blood tests nonetheless thinking, that at worst, I must have picked up some viral bug. Eventually I was diagnosed with typhoid which is why the pages of this e-journal haven’t been written in for a while.

 

But, all the health shenanigans aside, the pressing question is:  should I persist with this marriage of wire and thread, or is thread alone enough?

 

---

[i] The half-hitch is an ancient knot which is a simple overhand knot where the working end of a line is brought over and under the standing part.  It cannot stand on its own and is usually tied around a pole or some structure, even rope. It has however been incorporated into beading and other embroidery methods.

The Violence of A Needle

The other day, my friend Manisha, posted this comment as her status on facebook:

[20th June 2013]

 

“Nigella chocked, Rihanna battered, Madonna hit on the head with baseball bat, Halle Berry hit so hard that she looses hearing, Whitney Houston with cut-lip & bruised cheek, Mariah Carey too !!! [Delhi Times 19/6]

........dear men of the World.what is it that propels you to such aggression...is it just patriarchy????...from glitzy Hollywood to our own shores.........for a while I shall avoid asking ''what right do you have to do so?"

 

[I have reprinted it exactly as she wrote it, spelling mistakes included]

 

It was late in the evening when I read it and soon after, I picked up my  embroidery. I kept thinking about what she had said. I could not dismiss it. I too have been in relationships that have been abusive and violated my sense of self in physical and emotional ways and I could understand where she was coming from. It allowed me to feel my rage too. Does it happen to all women? Is it about self-respect or lack of it? And what does one do when one has been through such experiences? The newspapers report some crime or other each day. Rape, murder, terror and even the recent flooding in Uttarakhand is no less violent, is it?

 

With these thoughts circling my mind, I kept sewing. Needle in, pull the thread, needle out, going round and around, tracing the stains with a running stitch. And then I realized that using the needle could also be considered an act of violence. The fabric is mute, it does not protest and just like I made the stains, it seemed that I was subjecting the fabric through the act of stitching, of piercing it again and again with the point of this sharp instrument, to another kind of violence. I looked at this long, slender tool, held between my thumb and forefinger, its pointed tip poised to strike again, waiting to lunge forth into the fabric, at my command.

 

I stared at it long and hard. It was after all a perpetrator of violence – a criminal like all the men who raped and abused and those who killed, and mother nature herself was not beyond it too. As they say when someone is cruel – what kind of person are you, what are you made of? I have no idea what the needle is made of. I asked it the same question: what are you made of? I looked on the packaging for some clues, but there was no mention of materials used.

 

Needles have been around for a long time and sewing in the subcontinent dates back to the Indus Valley civilization - needles have been excavated at Mohenjodaro. I quickly did some research and learned that the first needles were apparently made of bone or wood while the modern ones are made using high carbon steel wire which is nickel or 18 carat gold plated to minimize corrosion resistance. The highest quality embroidery needles are apparently plated with two-thirds platinum and one-third titanium alloy. They are tough and pierce through fabric without bending or losing shape - without any kind of compassion it seems.

 

I had never thought of sewing as a violent activity but as I continued with my embroidery, I learned something.

 

The layers of fabric in my hands had been subjected to considerable violence. I had burned it. I had shred it and had then stitched these layers with needle and thread, piercing through the warp and weft, tearing the very fabric asunder. But the miracle of stitch is that the needle may wound, the needle may pierce and tear, but the thread it carries, keeps it all together – embellishing the fabric it wounds.

 

If one considers how beautiful embroidery can be and how much this art is used to embellish our clothes and homes, then the needle doesn’t just wound or violate, it provides for another dimension to be added to the fabric. If one could extend this to the human fabric, could one begin to look at acts of violation as opportunities that add something of value to the fabric of being?

 

Something to think about.....?