Sarah V. Baldwin
Motherlove Quilt
Upcycled Fibers
2018
My affection for textiles developed at a young age, out of moments spent in the kitchen with my mother learning to sew by deconstructing thrifted clothes and reimagining them as new, self-expressive garments. This process of upcycling and infusing discarded, yet sentimental, scraps of fabric with new life alongside my mother has since defined all of my creative endeavors. Now, my desire to work with found fabrics is both an environmentally conscious response to our global abundance of clothing waste as well as a result of my curiosity regarding our visceral connection to textiles, specifically at the intersection of memory and shared experience. My work is also rooted in the long-standing relationship between women and textiles.
Motherlove Quilt is an effort to mend my Motherline. Accompanying the work is autoethnography exploring what it means to lose a mother, how trauma and memory manifest from one generation to the next, and the ways in which one becomes their own mother. The piece utilizes found fibers and clothes from various family members.
At the heart of my work is a desire to better understand the various realms of womanhood through the dissection of the physical and emotional bonds I have developed with the vibrant women in my life. I have mothered my child self through this work and have become a better mother to my son. Through my work I heal, wrap myself up within the cloak of my motherline, and tune myself into the literal and metaphorical threads that serve to connect us all.
