Stitching Stories

When I first discovered embroidery at fifteen, I stitched on thin cotton with the friendship bracelet thread and safety scissors from my childhood. Then, as I grew in my abilities, my craft aged with me. When I picked up an embroidery hoop and clamped the thick, new, special fabric inside, my fingers began to push and pull the needle. I followed the threads, sometimes without looking or thinking, and created imagery with meaning. I never followed a pattern; the creations were of my own making. Embroidery is an act of repetition and precision, and sometimes, with the right intentions, it is elevated through symbolism. I soon realized that to engage in a traditionally domestic craft in a creative way is subversive to patriarchal norms and expectations of femininity and yet also honors the work of our foremothers. I thought about the ways craft is passed down through generations, and through hoops and scissors, too.

I’m now twenty-two and a recent college graduate. In college I studied religion and women’s studies and discovered the intersections between experiences, contentions, historical oppression and through that, realized the deep, storytelling power found within craft. I’ve been compelled to craft pieces addressing women’s sexual freedom, mental health, and spirituality.

I read the story of Jepthah’s daughter from the Old Testament for a class. It resonated with me and I decided to create something beautiful out of the tragedy within. In the story, Jepthah made a deal with God that if only God could make his people win a war, he would sacrifice the first living thing to come out of his house upon his return from battle. Unfortunately when his daughter--left nameless in the text--excitedly stepped over the threshold of their home to greet her father, her fate was sealed. She was granted three months of mercy before the sacrifice and with it she honored and mourned her life with her closest confidantes: her friends, her women. They went to the mountains and mourned the loss of her life. Notably, she did not rush into marriage before death. Instead she escaped the patriarchal realm by gathering the women around her, and they celebrated and mourned her.

Édouard Debat-Ponsan, in his painting, “The Daughter of Jepthah,” depicts a despairing daughter. In the painting, twelve women, mostly draped in white, lay upon one another in the foreground of a mountainous scene. They look exhausted, but it’s unclear from what. Perhaps it was out of despair, but I wondered if they were tired from all the dancing and lay across the rocks because of that. It is also unclear which of the women is Jepthah’s daughter. Is she lying down on her own, or finding comfort in the arms of one of her friends?

Inspired by the story and the painting, I endeavored my biggest and most challenging project, not only for its size, complicated patterns and mixture of stitching, sewing, and painting, but because I wanted to honor Jepthah’s nameless daughter the way she and the women did, too. In my piece, I chose to center the woman who is displaying the most emotion, the woman splayed on the ground, her draped cloth barely covering her body. Unlike Debat-Ponsan’s muted earth tones and clear sense of mourning, my piece is bright, colorful and emotionally complicated. I chose to balance the contention between her mourning and joy by juxtaposing her pose with a bountiful floral ground instead of dirt, and stitches that create texture and excitement. I used mixed media to further emphasize the complicated emotions and themes. All of this is made by the diverse possibilities of thread.

This project took yards of thread and months of contemplative stitching while I sat on my tiny dorm room bed. Sometimes I brought my hoop with me to the library or dining hall, and I stitched even in class, perhaps to the dismay of my professors, who might have expected me to take lecture notes. But I was committed. I knotted and cut hundreds of threads at the beginning and end of each color, flower, mountainous range, and strand of hair. There were times that I thought I would never finish and I cried over this hoop. When I felt discouraged I thought of the pain and strength of women of the past who mourned the loss of their lives at the hands of the men who controlled their fate--husbands, brothers, strangers, and for the subject of my project, her own father.

I presented my creation to my class--Gender and Violence in the Bible--which happened to be an all-women classroom, with the exception of our much beloved and empathetic professor. I enjoyed sharing my work with my classmates and we shared our thoughts about the women we read about and our felt connections to them.

I loved making this piece and I continue to love embroidery, despite all the pricks to my fingers. The results holds beauty and great meaning, and allow connections across the ages. As I endeavour on more projects, I continue to discover the possibilities that my hands are capable of creating, and I am grateful for the tools that allow me to do so.