With strings attached…

(posted by Sujata Noronha)

I find myself deeply sad that my Stitching Stories workshop ended.

We had stitched ourselves into our patches, and into each others lives.
Suddenly we knew intimate things about each other, we knew that Elaine was not keeping too well and her back hurt, we knew that Krystal did not like to stitch as much as she loved to sing but was bringing the two together, we knew a little bit about Aditi and her school, about Tarini and her love for songs, about Ashini and how she felt about advertisements and the medical practice and about Svetlana and her dogs.
The children learnt about me, about my stitching stories, my life and the joys and they patched themselves in.
I had to let them go.
It is like you labour for a bit on the perfect button hole stitch around a stocking and then find you have goofed up at a corner and you have to let go.
It is like you have just threaded the tiniest hole in a needle and then you pull too strong on the other end and you have to let go.
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It is like you want to figure out the intricacies of the long and short stitch but it is darned tough for now so you have to let go.
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For me it was all that and more.
The more lies in the facts that I am more convinced than ever that Stitching is therapy. In my sharing at the end of the day, Niju’s happiest moment on one day was that he finished his patch! Every day of the workshop was a happy day for me, I stitched. Every one who came to the stitching workshop have shared in reflection how they felt about the stitching and it was all positive.
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So what does stitching do that many other ‘recreational’ tasks do not do?
I am stitching up a paper, long and laborious that will share what I have learnt. But in the meanwhile I am stitched into into the lives of everyone who supported the idea and threaded with me. I am stitched to Eva , who will take this workshop further with me. I am stitched to the children participants who will forever own a bit of my soul, I am stitched to the collaborative Banyan project that we will write about separately  – stitching and sharing.

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