Category: Textiles

On radical self-care

11/20/2024

Making ourselves whole through making

First there is shock. I saw it in a coffee shop in a small US city the morning Trump was elected — again. The place was full but hushed. “Are you okay?”, one customer after another whispered to the three female baristas. Nods. Shrugs. Back to work.

Another shock hit the next day, when a friend confirmed our worst fears: the cancer had spread, nothing more for it. Silence, then tears all around.

First the shock, then the rage. Why? Why now? Why them? Why us? We cast around for blame. Eventually we arrive at the only thing for it: regrouping, starting from the self and working out from there.

My no-nonsense inner grandlady tells me to Get a hold of yourself, advice I take in the most loving way. I hold myself up by burrowing in for a nap, taking a walk wherever the trees are, sinking into a hot bath. There is a kind of exquisiteness during this inward time of radical self-care. This engagement with the physical world is a humane activity that breaks the paralysis, the start of ‘getting it together’ or gathering oneself.

Gathering is also a trauma response to life-shattering events (look at hoarding). The urge to collect the shards and scraps is an attempt to make ourselves whole. I find solace in pulling together material scraps of handwork by other makers and other traditions, not to recreate the past but to consider new possibilities, new forms. Puzzling over textures and techniques is quiet, contemplative work. There is no pre-planning, no goal-setting to be achieved; I’m simply forging connections, intent on finding a fresh beauty in the rejected and damaged remains, one stitch at a time in a sort of personal/political practice.

After we collect ourselves we collect up with others because we humans are pack animals. We share our grief because we know that that emotion is a monster not to be ignored. Even the kitties or pups instinctively know when the moment calls for cozying up to their people.

Some of us share our art because we have to. We brew up a mug of Bengal Spice tea, clear a space on the table heaped with scraps of fabric, unravelling lace and stained embroidered linens, plug in the laptop and open an empty screen. And we reach out.

Donated hand-stitched linens and lace offer a further layer of meaning to an expanded painting practice (detail). (Carlyn Yandle)

An iron will is needed now

11/4/2024

Working out those wrinkles is so satisfyingIf you’re uselessly wringing your hands right about now, pump some iron.
Hear me out: Ironing is useful, which, in the few days left before the US election, is the opposite position of those of us watching who can’t vote or compel Americans to vote. With democracy itself teetering on the brink it’s best to stop flitting about, pants on fire, and instead grab onto something stable and practical. Just maybe don’t do it in front of the latest broadcast of any of the mega-rich misogynists’ rallying cries; the TV screen is no match to an overhand launch of an iron.
If you’re rolling your eyes at this suggestion you may still be triggered by the iron as symbol of just more unpaid women’s housework, promoted through those post-war images of an ecstatic housewife standing before the only board she has access to. If you view her hubby’s freshly starched white shirt as his day pass out of one of those little boxes made of ticky-tacky, you are still afflicted.
I get it; letting go of the iron-as-shackles connection doesn’t come easy when you are born into that milieu. My cousin recently shared a photo of the two of us, as young as six, standing knock-kneed in skirts and knee-socks at a kid-sized ironing board, playing ironing yet there was little evidence of ironing activity in my own childhood home. This shit was insidious.
Inflation was hitting hard those days, and the petrochemical industry found an opportunity: pushing polyester as the time-saver for women who by choice or necessity entered the workforce. When my grandmother found herself single in her 40s she traded her home-sewn floral cotton dresses for Sears Fortrel mix ’n’ match coordinates, got her teacher’s certificate and moved to a remote town for work. My McDonald’s uniform was an itchy kelly-green combo of stretch pants and striped zip-up collared top.
Skip forward a few decades and we’re barely treading water in the synthetic polymersea of fast-fashion clothing that fuels microplastic pollution.

Ironing has no role in this wrinkle-free, race-to-the-bottom system. It’s part of the repairing-is-caring continuum toward a circular economy of natural-fibre clothing and toward our own well-being. It relaxes both rumpled, creased woven cottons and linens and our fine selves. You can’t doom-scroll when you’re gliding across a soft surface, settling wrinkles with puffs of steam. Ahhhhhh.
Quilters know all about the rewards of ironing following hours of wrestling bits of fabric into new arrangements with a temperamental sewing machine. Even the wonkiest quilt blocks in that stack “will all press out.” Ohhhmmm.
The time spent ironing favourite linens and natural-fibre clothing is an investment in those pieces, a time for personal reflection on their making and their makers. Grandma Flo may have embraced her wash-and-wear polyester pieces but she never abandoned ironing her quality dressy things or her fine cutwork table linens hand-stitched by her sisters. When it was my turn to have her over for tea she would tsk-tsk at my creased tablecloth. That it was thrifted was no excuse; all linens deserved pressing.
A decade after her death I created a part-figurative alterpiece anchored by a Teflon iron plate. The assemblage of found objects reflects her strength in the face of tumultuous change and the little pleasures of her everyday like teatimes, decoration and costume jewelry.

Two views of “Teflon Flo”: Found lamp base, iron plate, jelly mould, tea strainer, chandelier crystals (Carlyn Yandle)

At this writing, it is Dia de los Muertos and Teflon Flo is front and centre and shining its light. A few feet away from this ofrenda is a deep scorch mark in the circa-1898 wood floor that, judging by its diminutive footprint, dates back decades. I take it as a warning from a past homemaker — I’ve conflated her with my grandmother — to unplug the iron or it will all burn down. Which I am not thinking will happen if Trump is elected. Not thinking about that at all.

A warning from decades past: Don’t let it all burn down (Carlyn Yandle)

Faith is key when you're cutting up family heirlooms

6/7/2024

Is it easy to cut up hand-embroidered linen tablecloths, runners, pillowcases?

It is not. As an adequate hand-stitcher I understand the skill, labour, time and patience that goes into each linen. I understand the desire to cherish these vintage domestic-craft objects made for the joy of it that are eventually passed around and down the generations only to be hidden in some drawer or closet. I understand the impulse to rescue them from the humiliation of their thrift-store price tags of maybe five dollars.

Cutting through all these layers of meaning feels a little like slicing into someone else’s skin. What right do I have?

Am I ruining family heirlooms? Or daylighting unused linens that have been in the dark for decades? (Carlyn Yandle photo)

As word got out that I was amassing old embroidered linens for an artwork I gratefully received donations from friends and family. It’s a lot easier to be the rescuer of those tragic cases dotted with stains or holes. At least I can console myself that I’m ending the quandary over whether to keep this piece of Grandma or let it go.

But the weighty, pristine Irish linen tablecloths that bloom with finely stitched bouquets and drawn threadwork borders are quite another thing. I take a deep breath and make mental apologies and thanks to the unknown or long-gone maker. I remind myself that I’m not ruining a family heirloom but daylighting the work of handmade things that have been in the dark for decades. Then I let the rotary-cutter rip. I am Edward Scissorhands. I can’t help myself. Sorry, not sorry.

This is the struggle behind Forage, an under-construction field of improvisational log-cabin blocks in my preferred scale of queen-sized. Each embroidered scrap is a literal snippet of a larger piece, the analogue equivalent of a digital thumbnail image. Machine-stitched together the blocks are as cacophonous as an Instagram Explore field.

That effect grows exponentially as the blocks are stitched into rows, then rows onto rows. I’m now part-way through constructing the thing as a single field (“top”, in quilt language). Viewed horizontally it is a chaotic community garden of 42 unwieldy plots that spill out into the paths (“sashing”). I find new patterns for connection while merging the embroidered elements of one block into another block through the sashing, in a sort-of snail’s trail of stitches. As I mimic these markings of those makers, I feel a connecting thread. I am walking in their stitch-steps.

Despite the garden-plot references, this work is defying the horizontal, offering a reverse-side textural experience of an unstable grid of frayed edges. The maker-contributors never intended for the ‘wrong side’ to be seen, but when it’s all brought into the light, the translucent stained-glass effect cannot be denied. Suddenly I see connotations of religious symbolism, and I’m wondering about the power of the loose threads and those cryptic-looking stitches when viewed from behind the scenes. Something about sacrifice or at least about having faith that the discomfort in detaching from nostalgia is for good, not evil.

That openness is rich ground, another area to forage.

Connecting embroidered elements feels like walking in the stitch-steps of past makers. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

A backlit view of this work-in-progress adds further layers of pattern, texture and symbolism. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

On radical self-care

An iron will is needed now

Faith is key when you're cutting up family heirlooms

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