Healing My Inner Child

2021

Embroidery thread, fabric

20 x 32 inches

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As Berson states in her 2017 article, 10 Artists Who Are Taking Care, care manifests in a multitude of forms: from the physical to the more metaphysical, but the ways in which we take care of each other, how we share the affective burden. In my project, I use the theme of care both as a theme conceptually and materially. Using embroidery and quilting, this mode of creating was a delicate, domestic, and feminine craft, often associated with handing a material with care. For me, it’s also associated with fond childhood memories of my mother teaching me how to sew and make clothes for my dolls. 

 

My project is a baby quilt that I hope to pass on to my own child one day, with each blue square depicting a year in my life so far. The patterned squares are quilted from an old pair of my childhood pyjamas. Through the squares, I use embroidery to depict happy moments from my life as a way to heal my inner child. In creating this ‘care quilt’, I attempt to heal childhood traumas by accepting and loving the inner child within me. I tell her that she is safe, she is heard, she is taken care of, she will not be abandoned, and that she is loved.