i wanted to feel something

I wanted to make a quilt-like piece made out of my own clothing so that it would represent me. I took pieces of fabric, some that I found and others that I cut from my own pieces of clothing, and laid them out in a pattern that was both visually pleasing and kind of resembled a landscape or the earth. For some reason, when I’m having an outer body experience, I believe that I’m “the Earth Goddess” and can control the weather and the earth or something like that. The colors of the fabric I chose not only resemble that earthliness, but also resemble the typical colors that I wear. I’m also currently taking a color class and understand to some degree which colors go together and how they interact with each other. I made sure to put the pieces together in a pattern that made sense to me and also made sure that it corresponded with the meaning of the piece. I stitched them together with a blanket stitch, a very loose stitch, a stitch not meant to mend things together. This is me attempting to hold myself together, piece by piece, very loosely and almost insecure. The fabric I used is comforting and soft like people say I am. Most of them are pieces from sweaters that I currently wear. Because you only wear clothes on the outside, the piece is meant to represent my outward identity, how people usually view me on the outside before they really get to know me. 

The red patterned strip that goes across the piece represents a scar, both an emotional one and a physical one. I used a very rigid fabric so that it contrasted with the stretchiness of the fabric behind it. Scars are stronger than the skin around it and hold things together even better than it had before. I stitched it onto the ‘quilt’ with red and pink X’s in order to resemble stitches and healing. I cut slits within the strip and needle felted different colors of felt inside them. I placed them so that it looked like it was pretty much pooling out of the scar. The different colors represent different emotions/feelings almost seeping out, trying to get out. It’s as if someone had reopened a scar and as a result, the emotions erupted out in a soft, violent kind of way. This is the one part of the piece that is more apparent and striking. I wanted it to look almost painful, but not as gruesome as it could have been. 

The weaving that I put on the piece is meant to represent the act of trying to fix something that is broken, but not exactly fixing it completely because it’s still in repair. There are still holes and you can still see through it. It represents my vulnerability, how fragile I can be sometimes, and my flaws. This is what it looks like before the scar develops. 

The blue oval at the top right resembles a halo or the small glimmer of hope/light I still have in my life. It’s one of the only colors within the piece, other than the small hints of color in the felt, that is “inconsistent” and stands out. There is a huge contrast between the mellow, easy-to-look-at colors of the quilt and the color of the oval. I wanted it to be different from the color scheme of the quilt because it’s not technically a part of me yet even though I want it to be. I stitched it onto the piece to make it look like a sun with rays coming out of it to make it resemble light and hope even more. I wanted it to look like it was expanding, beginning to take over the piece. I made the rays into dashed lines so that it resembled a “cut line”. It’s meant to show how sometimes I’m scared of getting better and how easy it is for me to prevent that light from coming in. 

I displayed the piece by nailing it into the ceiling and the wall. This is supposed to represent martyrdom and how I have the tendency to, by definition, display or exaggerate my discomfort or distress in order to obtain sympathy or admiration. I wish I didn’t do this and I’m working on getting rid of my martyrdom, but since it’s such a profound part of who I am it was necessary to include it in this piece since it is a self-portrait. I tried to hang it up really high so that it was almost monumental. I wanted people to look up at it almost as if they were worshipping it. I wanted the piece to be seen as highly, but also pitied. Usually when people first meet me, they view me as something beautiful. As they get to know me, they understand how emotional and vulnerable I am. This also represents how I view myself when I’m in that emotional state. When I’m in that state, I view myself as above everyone else, but I also express myself in a way that makes people feel bad for me sometimes. 

This piece overall is obviously supposed to represent me. This is me in a state when I’m feeling good, maybe manic, when I view myself as a higher power, a religious power, as a goddess -- an earth goddess. I have both physical and emotional scars that are apparent when someone gets to know me. I tend to display myself and my emotions in a way to gain sympathy from others.  I’m still broken and still healing, but getting better because I still have hope. Despite everything that I’ve been through, I’m still holding myself together. 

Making this piece helped me learn a lot about myself. I learned that I still have flaws and that there are still a lot of things that I need to work on. Creating it was a performance within itself because I was pretty much stitching myself back together, piece by piece, trying to represent the key aspects of who I am or rather who I perceive myself to be. The whole process made me realize things about myself that I had never noticed before. I realized that I do in some way view myself highly because of how big the piece is and how I decided to display it. Most of the time, I view myself in a negative light and I think it’s good that I actually don’t believe the negative things I say about myself most of the time. I also realized that my scars and my emotions don’t have to be seen in a bad way either. I can represent them softly, in a way that isn’t too dramatic. 

As I was making the piece, I had it hung up in my room above my bed so that every time I would lie down I had to look up at it. That really helped me admire the beauty of it and as a result, helped me see the beauty within myself. When I look at it, I notice the scar first; I see the struggles that I’ve been through and how I’m still dealing with them now. And as my eyes move around the piece, I see the blue and the light that it emits and I feel hope, that maybe someday, I will be drenched in that blue light and finally be content.