Kya Soch Rahe Ho........(What are you Thinking)

 

Sometimes, I don’t know what I’m thinking. Especially when engaged in doing household chores, cooking and such stuff that I try and get over with as fast as I can, I’m rarely focused on what’s going on the mind screen. Thoughts come and go but I am too busy with the job in hand that I can rarely recollect what they were.

Often, when I’m knitting and crocheting my ‘thought-nets’, I’m also not really focusing on thoughts either. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s not always easy to understand one’s own disposition. And the essence of issues that plague the mind - the deeper and untiring dialogue with self, is usually buried under the busyness of the day. If I want to look at myself think I do, but otherwise I watch something on nextflix, listen to a talk on YouTube or a book on Audible, to switch off from the superficial chatter of the daily rubble.

Sometimes, when the rant spills over, I can’t watch or listen to anything. My head is just screaming to be heard. If I can, I write in my journal or if it’s too chaotic to form sentences and if there too much emotion, I may speak to a friend. If I don’t feel comfortable talking to anyone, I babble into my phone and record the tirade. When I hear it back - the emotion, irritation and anxiety of what’s been said -that is if I can bear to go over the whole thing again, I do get a clearer picture of the problem at hand. Of why I’m feeling stressed. If I can’t hear that stuff again, I’m relieved that my mind is lighter for off-loading it. Usually it’s stuff that’s deemed unnecessary, pertaining to a whole host of mundane things that are detracting from the essence of what some part of me wants to think about, but the mind is exhausted with itself and cannot muster the discipline to do so. Sometimes feelings overwhelm and they cannot easily be put into thoughts and words – at best disjointed ones.

I’m a reflective sort of person, so I usually begin my day, writing in my journal. I start with reading the previous entry to get a sense of where I left off, because unresolved things have a habit of playing like elevator music, that’s heard but not really listened to - not enough to recognise the melody, not unless it’s a familiar tune, when we do sing along effortlessly – if we like the tune. In trying to get through the processes of living, which requires focus on the mundane, on driving, cooking, folding clothes and other tasks - the screaming is actually this underlying background dialogue that’s unfinished and unresolved, which is demanding it’s time and share of attention.

When I start this morning dialogue with myself, if I’m in a self-reflective mood, I can write for hours. If not, I leave off where I cannot go farther with the thought. Either I’ve said enough or I just can’t quite get to any point of understanding. Often I have to leave things for the thoughts to emerge. Where a movie, a talk or something else - even the rhythm of knitting sheds light.

And, more often than not, it is conversations or interactions with someone else that really helps shed light on what’s going on in one’s own mind - a reflective surface kind of mirroring dialogue. If it doesn’t automatically occur to me, I put my attention on what about the conversation struck me, moved me, or the advice I may have given . And it’s almost always what I need to think about for myself, albeit in a varying degree or context. This then requires deeper reflection which takes me into those areas that eons of exploration leave me tired and unfulfilled, but ideas that I need to resolve to whatever extent possible, because unless I do so I’ll never be free of the distressing inner rant.

 

A net by its very nature is something to catch things. Fishermen use it to catch fish, which is food for the human body. In Goa, many outdoor restaurants and cafes suspend nets under over-arching trees to catch the falling leaves so that the foliage debris doesn’t hamper happily chomping guests.

So what does a ‘thought-net’ do? What does it catch, or prevent from imposing or entering a protected space or field of vision?

 

If I put the larger and more cumbersome nets that I’ve created over my head, as an extension of my mind - an evocation of what’s going on inside my head, then it’s a kind of trap. A net that binds me within its threads. And not unlike repeating thoughts which bind us to people, situations and circumstance. But, the irony is that ranting and venting - going over the same ideas - creating this ‘thought-net’, is also a way out of this bind.

When we vent or rant - go on and on about a situation, most of us want sympathy because we see ourselves as victims of an unfair circumstance or relationship. Or we don’t have the courage to do or say what we really feel. Or perhaps we don’t have clarity and have conflicting feelings that need detailed analysis. In some sense, the situation challenges us.

I’ve often noticed this about myself that, if I’m on top of things, or matters are going well, there is no need for a dialogue. It’s only when I’m not able to get a grip on what’s going on that, the why’s and why-not’s circle around endlessly. And depending upon the intensity of the situation and emotion it evokes, I may lie awake at night, wondering why I can’t sleep despite vigorous exercise and feeling pretty darn sleepy too.

 

I was speaking quite recently to a friend, about the paradoxical beauty of our thoughts. This had occurred to me when I was looking at an embroidery pattern I had created within a series of ‘thought-nets’. The resultant ‘thought-net’ was visually attractive and led me rethink the very idea of ‘thoughts’ as being a burden. Of our ‘thought-patterns’ being something destructive. Such that new age philosophy underlines, telling us to get let go the past, to change our thoughts etc. Enticing us with absolutely miraculously solutions that almost never work quite as effectively and definitely not in the long term. Not unless we are on the brink of taking that leap by having done plenty of the work already.

 

Our thinking patterns, the template of our moral, ideas and ideals arise from societal norms, familial dictates, cultural morals and more that have evolved through individual, social, cultural, national and world events. All of which have collectively framed the psyche of our elders and educators, their ancestors and theirs: going as far back as time itself. Therefore, inherited ‘patterns’ are really not something we can get past easily enough. And, they are the real reason that the thread of ‘thought-nets’ catch us, binding the imaginative mind, curtailing the freedom of our spirits - keeping us from transforming our human destinies and exploring the potential of our human selves, even going beyond this.

My friend’s response was that negative thinking cannot be seen as beautiful, despite what the ‘thought-net’ I was showing her was proof of. She appreciated the artwork, but couldn’t correlate it with what she herself experienced when her mind is gripped with dismaying thoughts - negative thoughts in common parlance.

At one level, I agree with her. When you’re going on and on in a non-empowering way it’s enervating - for both you and the person listening to you. Fact is that negative gives power, when it’s changed through its charge into positive, and the two together is what generates energy. Negative thinking disembowels, but it is also creating an unacknowledged impetus within us, to rise above. If we were happy in that state, there really wouldn’t be any need to rant, complain or drag us and everyone around us, down the dingy steps of despair. We do that because we want a way out, but can’t see it. But lightening the load, getting consolation from friends, seeing that we are not alone in these things, lends confidence to delve within. That’s what we really want. Not necessarily advice, but solace. Not solutions that someone else gives but a means to reduce the thought load and find a way to the subtler voice of our own wise being. At times advice is sought, solution providers can be useful too but essentially the two charges of negative leading to positive - self-affirmation and feeling good, is what brings forth the energy. And in an instant the binds of the ‘thought-net’ are torn asunder. And we taste that enviable taste of freedom. Of being unstoppable.

I think that makes the process quite beautiful, don’t you?

Personal Threads: I Stitch To Pray. Guest post by Reverend Annabel Barber



Journal and sketch-book covers (on the theme of the sea)

made in 2018, using cotton fabric coloured using ‘inktense’ blocks,

shells, sheer fabric, threads, sequins and glass beads.

Techniques include piecing, applique, couching,

hand-stitching, and machine quilting

Quilting. There’s a word that breathes life into my soul! The piecing together of fragments and leftovers to make something ‘new’ and beautiful. I am not an artist. I stitch to pray and to grapple with scripture (like Jacob, ‘I will not let you go until you bless me!’). I experiment and, as with all experiments, I learn from those that don’t work, which become the unfinished, the UFOs that sometimes haunt me.

 

 

Me as a baby in a dress my godmother
hand-made and hand-smocked for me.




I was born in a home for unmarried mothers in the late 1950s. I write this sentence knowing that it doesn’t convey the pain, shame and cruelty my birth mother endured. At six weeks old I was removed from every trace of her and my heritage, and given a completely different life, on a Lincolnshire farm. The fields around me formed a changing patchwork of colours, green in spring, apart from the beautiful wild golden fields of daffodils, growing in the flat Dutch-like landscape. In autumn the vista changed to the golden-white of the ripe corn, and then the rich red brown of newly turned fertile soil after ploughing. Maybe that’s why I spend my time diligently piecing a colourful patchwork of fabric together!

 

 

 

The Path to Heaven, Wall-hanging.  2013/14

after a quilt retreat in Colorado led by Ricky Tims.

Made using hand dyed cotton, hand-dyed silk velvet, and beads.

Techniques used include applique, piecing, hand and machine quilting,

 hand and machine embroidery and hand beading. 

 



 

When I show my quilts (mainly to church groups, those I hope will ‘get’ something of what I am trying to do), I am always asked two questions: ‘How long does it take to make one of these?’ And ‘How did you first start quilting?’ The first question is unanswerable. Each project takes my whole life, and everything I have experienced, sometimes I cannot finish a project for years because I haven’t yet acquired the skills I need for it.

 

 

The Path to Heaven (close-up) .  2013/14 . 

But it is easy to explain how I started. I remind my audience of ‘Golden Hands’, a long-running series of UK magazines from the 1960s and 70s. These magazines (cheaply bought in bulk from the local newsagent when they were out-of-date), with their clear instructions and good illustrations were my teachers, along with my adoptive mother, who was an exquisite needlewoman and knitter. She had been orphaned at 16, and mainly picked up her skills from friends and their mothers. It enabled them all to creatively make more of their ration coupons during the Second World War. She lived in lodgings for some years before her marriage, having moved from the urban sprawl of Bradford to the small Lincolnshire town of Louth to be near her older brother. One particularly talented friend of hers became my godmother, and made beautiful smocked dresses to celebrate my arrival in the family. As a child. I didn’t have the patience to master my mother’s skills, too fond of time spent with my head in a book! And I was always one for speed over accuracy – she described my dress-making as ‘blowing things together’! Living on a farm everything had a practical purpose, no cross-stitch samplers for us! I sewed to make clothes. Patchwork was putting leftover scraps and bits from the rag-bag together – not that I actually made much with them, they were ongoing projects, a bit like life.
 



 

Loaves and Fishes wall-hanging, 2012 .

Exhibited at the 2013 Sacred Threads exhibition in Virginia (USA).

This quilt shows the loaves and fishes from the feeding of the 5000,

one of the greatest miracles. Christ takes the simple food a child offers,

blesses it and feeds those who are hungry. We each have our gifts,

our loaves and fishes that can feed the world, both physically

and spiritually. But it takes courage to offer something of ourselves,

 to come to Jesus and give him what we have and allow him to use it for others.

 And too often our society seems to be saying “But I want a burger and fries,

not loaves and fish!” Using cotton, mixed fibres, sequins and lace.

Techniques used include applique, piecing, hand and machine quilting. 

Life. Which took me away from the farm and the countryside. Which made me choose between art, English, and science. At 18, in 1977, I chose science, went to University in Leeds to do a BSc in Pharmacology, and then into a job in science publishing. At least I could be creative with the use of words,  and this was the closest I could get to stitching together the disparate drivers in my life.
 



Loaves and Fishes wall-hanging, 2012 . close-up.

Using cotton, mixed fibres, sequins and lace.

Techniques used include applique, piecing, hand and machine quilting. 

But what about faith? That I certainly didn’t get from my adoptive family, who were occasional reluctant attenders at church at best. But it has always been the foundation, the bedrock of my life. As a child from the age of seven I used to walk to where the long drive of the adjacent farm ended, to be collected for church and Sunday School in the local town. I remember my surprise when I began to realise that not everyone talked with God as I did. Even as a child I made my own rituals to keep me safe.

 

Detail from a quilt made for the school where my daughter taught. Begun in 2008, finished in 2017. I wanted the children to have something comforting to cuddle under in their ‘Reading corner’. Cotton, machine pieced and quilted.

I grew up, married, and our family grew with our first child being born in 1988. My sewing kept me (relatively) sane, and then in 1993 we went to Texas. The (UK) Cambridge-based company my husband worked for wanted him to relocate to Austin, so when he was needed in the US for the launch of a project the family went too, to experience first-hand a little of what living in America was like. My two older children were three and five, and it wasn’t an easy visit until I met the quilters.
 



Detail from wall-hanging of Jonah in the belly of the Whale

made in 2016. It was made as my response to the Biblical

story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale.

Cotton hand-dyed material, beads.

Techniques are machine quilting and hand sewing.

I had braved the Austin traffic to drive to a Quilter’s Guild meeting to hear Doreen Speckman speak. A wonderful evening, and beautiful, inspiring quilts. Everyone was kind, but I was shy and out of my depth. At the end of the evening, I inadvertently left through the wrong door and, disoriented, couldn’t find where I had parked my car. An enormous white Cadillac drew up alongside me, driven by a very small lady who could just about see over the steering wheel. With her help I found, not only my car, but laughter and loving friends who sustained me during the rest of the visit. My remaining time in Austin was swept into sewing days with my new-found friends, who even lent me a Singer Featherweight to use during my visit. I still have the ‘watercolour’ quilt pieced on that machine. They shared fabric with me, and taught me about American strip-piecing. They were greatly amused by my Laura Ashley fabric laboriously pieced over paper hexagons, which really wasn’t the ‘done’ thing in 1990s America.
 



Baby quilt made for a church fund-raiser (2017).
Cotton fabric, machine pieced and quilted.

After a few months, I came back to the UK having realised that I was too European to thrive in America. There’s quite a gap between the pioneering spirit of America, and the deep historic rootedness that I had discovered in myself. During our visit, I reacted by becoming more English as the days went on, and was in danger of demanding cucumber sandwiches with my Earl Grey tea at 5.00pm each day! But I came back having been well and truly bitten by the patchwork bug.

 




In 1995 I enrolled on a 2-year, City and Guilds adult-education course on Patchwork and Quilting, learning technique after technique, grappling with art and design, and ignoring the lectures on colour (I value my innate colour sense, and didn’t want to be ‘taught out’ of using my instincts). My third child arrived early, just before I finished the course, and I patched and pieced my chaotic life together. I pieced through a sudden move from Cambridge to York. I sewed through loneliness of being uprooted from a village to city living, and medical emergencies that spiralled as my both my father and mother’s health deteriorated, and my brother had a liver transplant. And then I began training as a Spiritual Director.
 



Mandala wall-hanging created during Ann Myrhe’s online course
(Mandala Unplugged, 2018). Cotton fabric, silk ribbon, beads,
silk and metallic threads. Techniques include knitting, crochet,
silk ribbon embroidery, applique, (all hand-stitched).

‘Draw Hope’, was our first  assignment for the course. So frustrating, as I have the same innate ability to draw as a giraffe. I went home, pieced-together ‘Hope’ from fabric and took it to the group a couple of weeks later. Something astonishing happened. Everyone related to quilted ‘Hope’ from where they were, they saw things in the piece that resonated for them, but which had not been part of my intention. I suddenly became aware that I could connect visually, spirit to spirit, in a completely different way. I could ‘speak’ my soul in cloth.

After a long illness my brother died, and stitch became my only prayer as I walked through grief. The slow journey to priesthood quickened in me and I sewed my spiritual autobiography (I’m not sure this is what my tutors expected when they said we could submit the assignment ‘in any form’). I designed the silk stole in which I was ordained Deacon, and which I wore again when I became a Priest a year later, in 2005.
 



Safe to shore (close-up) wall-hanging (2017). Made as an example piece for a retreat I shall be facilitating later this year. Cotton hand-dyed and commercial fabrics, shells, lace and glass beads. Techniques include piecing, applique, hand embroidery and machine quilting.

I stitched through my three years as a Curate, which is the initial training post that all Church of England clergy take up, it felt a bit like being a Priest with training wheels! I continued to stitch through the challenges of being a hospital chaplain in a deprived ex-fishing town, the post I went to when my 3-year curacy ended. I stitched through my own tears when stillborn babies were born in the hospital to very young couples, or when I accompanied and prayed for patients and their families who struggled to come to terms with the realisation that life is ending. Sometimes I helped family members while away a long bedside vigil with stitching and prayer. Sitting at my own father’s bedside as he lost his battle with cancer I took up knitting again, the companionable silence that fell with the rhythmic click of the needles as I knitted socks had a calming effect on us both.
 



Fair Isle knitted cushion cover (2008 my design)

 

A fellow priest’s description of the difference between painting as art and as prayer released me to share my spiritual musings in stitch with others. ‘Art’ had an external value, it could be ‘judged’, given a pass or fail, sometimes it wasn’t ‘good enough’.  But prayer is about my connection with God and the life of the Spirit, there is no judgement in it, it is always good enough for God, and sometimes it may have something to say to other people as well. Creativity seems to flow across disciplines and is many people’s main connection with the Creator God. Encouraging and fostering creativity in craft enables people to be creative in other areas of their lives. Learning stitching can help someone find a new pathway through grief, or the rhythm of hand-stitching or knitting can enable the quiet rhythm of prayer. My congregation in Waddington have, I hope, benefitted from events that involve creativity - cutting and sticking for the little ones, colouring, card making, origami or sewing for the more mature in the congregation. We mark St Michael’s day (our patron saint) each year with an impressive celebration of dragons and Saint-inspired crafts before a short service and simple shared meal.
 



My first attempt at goldwork (2018)!

Maybe it is the rhythm of the needle that is prayer to me. Certainly I have seen its calming effect on retreatants during textile art retreats that I have facilitated for the Creative Arts Retreat Movement. Maybe it is my own need to piece together the broken that drives me. Maybe I am stitching my fractured soul together. But, for me, patchwork is prayer, and I am so grateful to those who have helped me to this realisation. Maybe it is ‘only patchwork’, ‘craft not art’, but patchwork has taken me to places I would never have dreamed of visiting. It has given me friendships that I will always value, and truly for me is ‘peace work’.



Washed-up! (work in progress 2018) wall-hanging.
Cotton and nylon fabric and sheers, beachcombed shells,
embroidery threads. The background was machine quilted
and then ‘crashed’, shells applied under sheers,
with cross stitch and some hand embroidery


 

Annabel R. Barber MA, is Rector of the parish of Waddington near Lincoln in the UK. She is also Rural Dean of Graffoe Deanery, and is involved in the ministry of spiritual direction. She occasionally facilitates retreats and quiet days for the Creative Arts Retreat Movement (CARM). More information about CARM, and the retreats and quiet days that it organises can be found on their website: http://www.carmretreats.org or on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CARMRetreats/

 

Personal Threads: Pink Cashmilon by Suzy Singh, Guest Post

There were no baby showers in those days. Certainly not in the seventies and eighties, in the Phulkari (embroidery technique unique to Punjab) obsessed town of Patiala in Punjab, where I spent most of my summer and winter holidays, basking in my grandparent’s love. But there was a ritual that made the pregnant waiting for the arrival of any baby in the family, deeply symbolic. It was the way my Nani-ma (maternal grandmother) invested endless hours knitting her magic into bewildering patterns, using pastel coloured Cashmilon (acrylic yarn) balls that she transformed into adorable pieces of infant attire. It was this unconditional act of love that made the arrival of every child in the family a great honour.

 

I was two years old when I first arrived at my grandparent’s house in Punjab. My family had recently met with a car crash and mum was struggling to deal with its aftermath while also attending to two young children. I’m not exactly sure why as the younger of two siblings, I was chosen to be sent away to Nani-ma’s house, but I guess in hindsight, I’m really grateful for it. I lived with my grandparent’s for the next couple of years till I was old enough to start schooling.

 

Unsettling as that displacement was for the little ‘me’, it gave me the opportunity to forge a deep and meaningful bond with my grandparents. As I observed my Nani-ma go about her daily routine, knitting, cooking and indulging us, I learnt about the incredible power of love and compassion. Back then, I wasn’t aware that the separation from my mother would create an unconscious program of abandonment in me. This limiting program may never have healed, had it not been for Nani-ma’s endless lessons in love.

 

Nani-ma was always so peaceful

 

There were times when she would chant hymns from the Rehras Sahib, (the evening prayer of Sikhs), under her breath while she knitted away, and the day turned quietly from daylight to dusk. At other times, she'd regale me with her stories and teachings while her fingers kept busy despite our conversations. Even as we sat immersed in the cinematic drama of movies, in pitch darkness, at dilapidated cinema halls in Sangrur, Rajpura and Patiala, her knitting needles didn’t rest for a moment. They seemed to be racing against time, weaving a legacy for every ‘expected child’ in her family. And thus she  kept on knitting, even as the seasons changed and the generations of her family grew up. In time, her shoulders froze with arthritis, but still her love knew no bounds. All she cared about was that enough sets of sweaters, matching caps and booties had to be made ready in time to welcome the new arrivals. 

 

Sometimes Nani-ma would stare emptily into the distance ahead, while her hands worked furiously on. I never knew what went on in her mind during those moments. She always seemed to have such a peaceful demeanour.  And yet, there were times when her needles made a peculiar sound, different from the usual clicking, that suggested her peace of mind may have been compromised. Her tranquillity, as I comprehend it now, was a carefully crafted mask which she wore with tremendous dignity and grace. Regardless of whatever anyone said to her, Nani-ma always stayed calm. But if those needles could have spoken, they may have revealed a  deeper truth. As I recollect that peculiarly frantic clicking in my mind now, I sense her inner turmoil and I wonder; did she ever feel as loved, in ways that she loved us all?

 

I guess you don't ask such questions from a reservoir of love. And so it was that the question never arose between us. But I wish it had. I wish it had tamed my selfishness, made me a tad more empathic to her needs, made me hold her hands in mine and treasure them in a way I always wanted to, but never really did. Alas, why wasn't I more conscious of her suffering? Instead, all I ever did was to greedily ask her for more freshly churned white butter on my paranthas (flatbreads), more Gajar-Shalgam-Gobi ka achaar (vegetable pickle), more Panjiri (traditional Punjabi sweet) that she made especially for the pregnant ladies of the family to nourish the fetus and facilitate an easy delivery for the mother, more haldi ki barfi (Tumeric sweatmeat) that I so relished, and more sweaters every winter. All of which she made exquisitely, with a joyful willingness, like no one ever could.

 

 

How I wish I had talked to her knitting needles, when she lay them down after a long day’s work, listening to the stories they had to tell. Surely they must have been privy to the secrets of one who had worked with them so deftly. But wisdom usually arrives late in life, filling one's heart with remorse. All one can do then is to gather those memories woven with love, and hold them close to one’s heart, wishing for another chance to love in a more conscious and wholesome way.  But since I cannot turn the clock back now, the only thing I can hope to do is to become a weaver of love, by training my hands and heart to knit her magic, by pouring my love generously and selflessly into all. That perhaps is the greatest tribute I can pay her, by simply becoming who she was.

 

I remember so vividly how all the grandchildren fought over who would sleep with Nani-ma during our vacations, or who had received more sweaters from her each winter.  As the styles changed, so did the shapes and designs of her hand-crafted garments. Twin sets, long dresses with belts, half sleeved jackets, caps, scarves, mufflers - anything we children demanded, was magically knit, sometimes even overnight. But it was the warm vests that remained the same through all times. Pure white, sleeveless, round-neck embraces of double-knit compassion, that were designed to keep her beloved family warm, through the coldest winter months.

 

Long cable dress with belt knit by Grandma in 1978

 

 

I often wonder if anyone ever asked my Nani ma if she felt loved. Or was everyone else, like me, simply content with just receiving from her, without ever sparing a thought about her needs? Whether it was the comfort of her cosy lap that we snuggled in, the nourishment of the hot Elaichi (cardamom) milk she prepared for us at bedtime, or the gentle thapki (tender patting) that made us drift into blissful sleep, all of us grandchildren were cherished and indulged beyond imagination.

 

Nani-ma was like the sun, giving off her warmth, every single day for as long as she lived, yet never asking anyone for anything. Except on those two days, when she must have begged for mercy from God. But her prayers were not answered. Not when she lost her younger son, so unexpectedly to heart failure, while his wife was pregnant with child. Not even when she lost her elder one, to a terrible car accident.

 

Nani ma

 

And yet, her face continued to wear a brave mask, but her body began to give way. Her shoulders became frozen with pain and her heart lost its fervour to knit. There were days when I stood outside her bathroom door and heard her suppressed wails as she desperately lifted an arm to put on her shirt or when she tried to placate her grieving heart. But Nani-ma never spoke about her pain, nor did she ever complain. She just went on with life, like drudgery. The only difference was that she prayed more fervently, through the rest of her days, as though begging God to take care of her sons. Or perhaps, requesting Him, to take her away. 

 

Slowly, the sweaters became fewer and rarer. Life snatched away her two grown sons prematurely, and with it the rhythm of her knitting lost its colour, design and purpose. The new-borns kept arriving and she did knit for them all, even for some of her great grand-children, but her magic had begun to fade. I saw it in her eyes, that dead stony gaze which told the story of her loss and her slackening will to live. Much as I wanted to, I could do nothing to soothe her pain.

 

Instead, I began knitting sweaters for my loved ones, just like Nani-ma did. I knit for my husband and for my new-borns. They were nothing compared to grandma’s knits, but I felt reassured when my husband repeatedly chose to wear his camel coloured, double knit, cabled sweater, that I made for him. On many a cold winter night, he warmed my heart by casually mentioning that this was indeed the warmest sweater of all.

 

Ribbed sweater I knit for my husband in 1992

 

Time passed and the sun rose one morning to announce that Nani-ma had passed on, quietly in her sleep. She left as gently as she had lived, without asking for help or burdening anyone. How I wish I had held my Nani-ma’s hands in reverence, and placed mine on her hurting heart, to comfort it. How I wish, I could somehow have healed the loss of her sons, and disentangled the traumatic knots that silently choked her grieving heart. How I wish, I had held her tightly when she ached for them, like she had held me, when I was fearful and forlorn. How I wish, I could have promised her that she would surely meet her lost sons again, on the other side, in the higher realms. How, oh how I wish, I had woven the same love into her life that she had knit into every child’s life that was ever born to her family.

 

And because I didn’t do any of those things for her back then, and now I know I never can, surely not on this earthly realm, I give my love to other people, hoping to heal their pain and unshackle their hearts and minds. And I weave this tale with deepest admiration and love, with the pink Cashmilon threads of my heart, to honour her life, to share her legacy with all, and to celebrate the extraordinary woman that my Nani ma was.

 

 

 

Suzy Singh learnt to live life, to sew, stitch, knit, cook, bake and most importantly, to love, from her grandma. After eighteen years in advertising, She relinquished a successful corporate career to pursue her soul’s purpose of healing, loving and giving. She is now a Healer, Spiritual Teacher and Author of the book, ‘7 Karma Codes - Heal the Storm Within’, available online: https://www.amazon.in/7-Karma-Codes-Suzy-Singh/dp/938423821X

 

Her website is www.suzyheals.com
 
She can be reached on suzyhealsme@gmail.com

 

‘Personal Threads’ is an endeavour to read our histories (both political and personal) as the interconnected pieces of a quilt – each one’s individual threads sewn together to form a larger picture. Telling our stories is a means to locate ourselves and who we are within the folds of their narrative. And often, who we are and what we do, emerges from the people, things and places that played some role in our past. We may claim different nationalities and religions but the DNA of our lives is complex and far from unconnected.

 

If you’d like to contribute to this project, drop me a line.

Personal Threads: Structure Me Not by Maggie Baxter, Australia, Guest Post

 



Maggie aged 7years,
wearing handknit
done by her mother
and or aunts

Quilting. Now there is a word that terrifies me, one I want to run away from. It is loaded like a gun to shoot me away from all pretensions of being a ‘serious’ artist into the murky lower depths of the craft circle with all its connotations of women’s work and the amateur.



slippage 2 - detail, Resist block printing
over dyed with organic natural dye on hand woven cotton

When Gopika suggested the concept of a narrative quilt, I thought ‘fabulous, great idea’ but quickly chickened out of the quilt and headed straight to the narrative. In a backward glance this meandering memoir, piecing together this and that, will investigate a little of why that is.

 

 

Cover of the book ’The Quilts of Gee’s Bend’

 

I am a fraud, that much you should know. Like all good feminist artists who work with textiles I have read The Subversive Stitch by Rozsika Parker, so I know that in Western countries, embroidery and all things stitched lost status from the middle ages when men and women worked together in guild workshops, until they were fully deemed women’s work in the 18th century. This fall from grace has never been restored. I have tut-tutted, shaken my head at this and probably had a little rant or two.

 

Quilt - detail  from the book, Irene Williams, c 1975

 

I check out art books all the time for inspiration. One I turn to, at least as much as if not more than any about painting or sculpture, is The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. If those quilts were painted they would be regarded as masterpieces of modernist abstraction - “geometric permutations of pure colour and form-bars and bands of colour offered up in bold confidence, intricate triangles playing visual eye games” . That they were born out of the repression of slavery using whatever their authors could lay their hands on makes their brilliance shine all the more. There is an unconscious immediacy about this work, and although the result is quite different the same can be said of traditional kantha quilts where soft, worn, aged saris are recycled into a new incarnation, the composition entirely at the behest of the maker.

 

'Slippage 1',
2.5 x 1 m, Direct block printing
 using organic natural dye on
hand woven cotton

But in the West, notwithstanding the small number of professional quilt artists who bravely set out to extend the parameters of the medium, most of my sisters in stitch spend hours and months patiently and carefully making quilts of pre-determined patterns from cheap cotton often pre-sorted into colour or themes (Christmas, landscape, Australiana etc etc). Yes, yes, I know it isn’t my business to comment, or wonder why, let alone pass judgement, especially if it gives them pleasure, but still I find it slightly depressing - like paint by numbers or embroidery kits. It seems that if the work is born of necessity and has to be the composition of the person doing it, there is a spirit so lacking in that which is pre-determined by others.

 

 

'Whole' - Maggie Baxter, Knitted

 

I can’t quite cross the line. See above, I have not called myself a textile artist but an artist who works with textiles. What a nit-pick! If I had stuck to my original intentions of sculpture, performance art and photography instead of being drawn by an irresistible, irrevocable, invisible karmic thread to Indian textiles, I wouldn’t have this dilemma. I am sure my friends in India, surrounded as they are by the ongoing splendour of their simultaneously ancient and modern - woven, printed, stitched and embroidered material culture, are just thinking ‘Whatever, but really, what is your problem?’

 

Teenage rebellion

 

'Slippage 2', 2.5 x 1m.
Detail, Resist block printing
 over dyed with
organic natural dye
on hand woven cotton

There was no quilting in our family or much sewing of any kind. I do have a small number of tray and tablecloths that my mother embroidered early in her marriage, but she didn’t maintain the enthusiasm. It was knitting that was the centre of our craft world. The hand knitted sweater and cardigan was epidemic in 1950’s and 1960’s England – the time and place of my childhood and adolescence. Someone could write a thesis on mid-20th century hand knitting just by going through our family photo albums. My mother and all my aunts knitted non-stop and with great skill. They could do complex cabling and multi-coloured patterns without even looking at the needles, watch television while they counted rows and stitches. Who, WHO, WHO would want to spend their life sitting at home knitting when there was a big wide world out there to explore my sixteen-year-old self, asked no one in particular - not ME I ungratefully muttered while putting in an order for whatever caught my fashion fancy on the knitting books that regularly arrived by post. And anyway, why bother to learn when someone else could already do it – and here I must digress for one moment to apologise to my mother on behalf of my teenage self.

 

Four elderly Scottish Aunts wearing hand knit sweaters and cardigans, cira 1960's

 

But did they all do it just for the love of knitting? To begin with, probably not but later probably yes.  I can only speculate because, taking it for granted, I never asked the question. They were very good at it, took pride in their skill but in the child rearing decades of post-World War II England it was an economic necessity. It was much cheaper to buy wool on the skein and knit than to buy a completed sweater. This hasn’t been the case for a long time and except for occasional brief revivals as ‘the new meditation’, hand knitting is well and truly in decline superseded by the ongoing barrage of quickly disposable machine made.

 

Sweater my mother, Phyl Baxter, knitted for me circa 1980

 

And when they weren’t knitting my female elders were neatly, carefully darning socks and old hand made sweaters. The throw-away society was on the horizon but in the mean time it was mend and make do. Not quite rafoogari but neat and functional nonetheless.

 

Sweater my mother, Phyl Baxter, knitted for me circa 1980, detail view

 

Then there was school – not that sewing or domestic science were major subjects, more a quick overview and then an option.  Retrospective note to long since deceased teachers (just in case you reincarnate into the same profession): if you want to engage the imagination of teenage girls do not start sewing lessons with three different ways to patch sheets. What you will end up is grubby bits of lacklustre tat that look like a dog chewed them. I am sure I am not alone from that class in saying I have never patched a sheet since.

 

'Uncurled 1',
Resist block printing overdid with organic natural dye
 on hand woven cotton. Pakko hand embroidery

 

I went to art school almost a decade later, chronologically somewhere between Punk and when the amputated asymmetry of Rei Kawakubo’s anti-aesthetic hit the catwalks of Paris and thereafter the world. Oh rip, tear and deconstruction, we were made for each other. I thought my lack of craft skills base had found its true calling without realising until I tried it just how skilful the apparent nihilist approach to cloth really was.

 

 

 

'Whole' - Maggie Baxter, Knitted

 

But disconcertingly I reverted to my origins. I knitted. First big soft sculptures Claes Oldenburg style before moving on to knitting plastic tubes, strips of fake fur, and even garden mesh. Then just as suddenly as the knitting fervour came upon me it went back into hibernation emerging once more in the 21st century as irregular lace-like textures achieved by dropping stitches, knitting into two or three stitches at a time and then randomly increasing them. Abstract knitting. I’m all over the place, just where I like to be.

 

'Drip', Maggie Baxter, Knitted

 

If I were going to consolidate the primary statement of my artwork – it would be line. My drawings (and therefore block printing, and use of stitch) are linear, calligraphic, scribbled. And strangely knitting is linear: It is the act of making a more solid cloth or garment by wrapping and knotting very long threads of fibre over two sticks. In my knitting, the thread never becomes solid, it loops and drapes into random circuitous lines. Some of these I have drawn again and turned into blocks ready for more randomness in the way they are placed on cloth.

 

'Drip', Maggie Baxter, Knitted, a detailed view

 

So, maybe there is another problem with quilting for me? It isn’t random. It is all about structure and building blocks. That is not say there can’t be randomness in the choice of colour or the way the blocks are built up, but still there does have to be some kind of geometry, forethought or plan in the layout. In quilting serendipity is pre-ordained no matter the oxymoron of that statement.

 

 

'Drift', Maggie Baxter, Knitted

 

I am having a personal, quiet little rebellion against structure. No more of in my life thank-you very much, I already have way too much. City Australia, which is here most of us live, is not the wild frontier of our myths and legends but an over regulated nanny state where we can’t even bicycle on a footpath to the local shop without a crash helmet. My working life coordinating public art in new buildings and public open spaces is a barrage of deadlines, timetables, minutes and reports even before we can get to the literal building blocks of the architecture into which the art is assimilating. So outside of that, in my own artwork allow me to indulge in the free form, be unprepared, totally intuitive, and let it roll out how it chooses to. I am just not sure I can do that with quilting.

 

'Drift', Maggie Baxter, Knitted

 

Maggie Baxter is an Australian artist, writer, curator, and public art coordinator.

References:
1. Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London, The Women’s Press. First published 1984, reprinted 1996.
2. William Arnett (Editor), The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.  John Bearldsley, Shelly Zegart, and Maude Southwell Wahlman (contributing editors), published by Tinwood Books, Atlanta, Georgia in assoc. with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2002.
3. Ibid. P.14

‘Personal Threads’ is about creating a narrative quilt, in an endeavour to read our histories as not something unconnected with each other or the past, which is personal and political, but to read our histories as the interconnected pieces of a quilt, assembled like bricolage. We may claim different nationalities and religions but the DNA of our lives is complex and far from unconnected. While the past has tremendous bearing,  the intention isn't to harp on it as a wail or dissent or blame, but to narrate this as a means to locate ourselves and who we are within its folds.

If you’d like to contribute to this project, drop me a line.