14/07/2020
The slow process of hand making is not only therapeutic but also a powerful form of resistance to power and to capitalist forms of production.
I was excited to contribute this work in response to the COVID-19 crisis to Adelaide based Stitch & Resist.
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“We Part to Meet Again”
Pattern designed and stitched by: Madeleine Seys
“We Part to Meet Again” is a sentiment borrowed from a nineteenth-century sweetheart token. It is a pun on the mechanism of the scissors; the blades part and meet again as true friends and sweethearts part and are reunited. I chose this motif as an as it encapsulates how we are parting and practicing social isolation in order to meet our loved ones and sweethearts again soon.
I am a textile artist, and my practice is to recreate the nineteenth-century hand sewing techniques and the embodied experiences of making. Working in threads, cloths and words, I weave, embroider, unpick and tailor in order to understand who we fashion ourselves and tell our stories.
I based the design for “We Part to Meet Again” on a pair of dressmaking scissors I inherited (along with my love of threads) from my grandmother; I embroidered the patina on their handles, acquired over years of being held in her hands. In my art, I am always drawn to scissors and hands as tools and symbols for my work.
