Kelly

“Maybe at the end of our lives we get a Ferris-Wheel vantage of the whole tapestry, the quilt laid flat, answering for its complexity. At the beginning we’re handed frayed and stained flowery bed sheets, a scrap of polka-dots, a snatch of strawberry print. Tattered as they are, there’s some sustaining sweetness in there.

The oldest pioneer quilts conceal bits of paper batting between their threadbare layers: postcards, recipes, clipped snippets of newspaper poetry. Every spare material had a part to play, fragments of experience and feeling arranged in a repeating pattern, little sewn sound bytes spinning ordered fractals.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

“There is camaraderie in sewing. With heads bent over stitching, confidences are more readily shared and topics can become more intimate. The pooling of equipment – scissors, threads, needles – necessitates small physical interactions that break down social barriers. Technical problems are communally solved, collective skill and achievement applauded.”
― Clare Hunter, Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power

“Embroidery is beautiful not only for what you see, but for all you don’t. From the back, it’s a messy map—absolute chaos, all switchbacks and starts. Knots upon knots, pulled with teeth and pricked fingers. Each one a prayer, on a string.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

“Sewing is a conscious activity, not just an object. It is what we put into cloth, the time, care, thought, the evidence of self that we invest in it that makes it potent. This is not mere surface decoration; needlework is layered in emotional meaning.”
― Clare Hunter, Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power