Last year I had to leave my home and studio of twenty five years and it was not easy. It was my little paradise and the grief process was long. Whenever I closed my eyes I was back there, walking around and looking in the corners. It was a tiny place, a studio cottage of one big open room with a bathroom.
To find a way to preserve the memory and still move on I decided to embroider the maps of my heart, both the placement of the furniture and the way that I moved around it, after 25 years the routes were engraved in my soul.
Handkys are symbols of grief and loss and as I unpacked and put things into storage I found a pile of my great aunts handkerchiefs. Fine lawn cotton and linen, they were too beautiful to pack away and forget so I embroidered them instead.
A fine linen one was used for the floor plan and four delicately embroidered lawn ones for the movement maps. The idea was that these could be overlaid onto the floor plan and the ghost of my home would reveal itself.
Floorplan on linen
Stem stitch, Bayeux stitch, Chain stitch and Bullion stitch
