Threads of Life

How stitching has accompanied me through each chapter.

When I look back over my life, I don’t measure it in years so much as in textures. In fabrics held. In threads chosen. In stitches learned, unpicked, relearned. Stitching has been there, quietly and faithfully, through more chapters than I can easily count. It has never demanded centre stage. It has simply waited — ready when I was.

In early chapters, stitching was curiosity. The simple wonder of how something flat could become something alive. How a line of thread could suggest a leaf, a curve, a shadow. I didn’t yet have the language for technique, but I already understood the magic of transformation.

Later, stitching became companionship. A steady presence alongside other responsibilities, ambitions, and obligations. Something that belonged only to me, even when much of life felt shared, scheduled, or shaped by outside expectations. My hands knew their way back to cloth long before my mind always did.

There were chapters where stitching was refuge. Times when words were heavy, but thread was light. When thoughts were tangled, but stitches could be placed one at a time. When I needed proof that I could still make something gentle in a complicated world. In those moments, embroidery was not about beauty. It was about breathing. About anchoring myself in something small, slow, and kind.

There were chapters where stitching was learning. Learning patience. Learning humility. Learning that mastery is not a destination, but a relationship. Every technique taught me that there is always more to discover — not just in thread, but in myself. That mistakes are not failures, but invitations. That even the most confident stitcher is still, always, a student.

And then came the chapter where stitching became calling. Not just something I did — but something I wanted to share. To pass on. To protect. To nurture in others. To frame not as a skill alone, but as a language. A heritage. A living art that carries memory, touch, and time within every strand. Teaching stitching has shown me how different each person’s relationship with it can be. Some come for precision. Some for peace. Some for history. Some for healing. And all of those reasons are equally valid.

Because stitching meets us where we are.
It does not ask who we were yesterday.
It does not demand who we must be tomorrow.
It simply invites us to sit — and begin again.

Now, in this chapter of my life, stitching feels like both home and horizon. It holds everything I have been, and everything I am still becoming. I stitch for beauty. I stitch for calm. I stitch for continuity. I stitch because my hands understand things my mind sometimes cannot yet explain. When I look at an old piece of work, I don’t only see stitches. I see the version of myself who made them. The patience she had that day. The mood she carried. The quiet hopes woven into the cloth.

Embroidery, in this way, is not only decorative. It is documentary. It records our lives in thread. And perhaps that is why it has stayed with me so faithfully — because it has never tried to separate who I am from what I make. It has allowed every chapter to leave its mark gently, honestly, and without judgement. My stitching is not perfect. But it is true.

And so, in every chapter — past, present, and still unwritten — I know this much:

There will always be thread.
There will always be cloth.
There will always be another quiet place where I can begin again.

And I am grateful for every stitch that has walked beside me so far.