Healing Skirt I

I took a Healing Skirt Course in Jan – April 2023 with Angharad Barlow. 

I was intrigued but didn’t know what to expect. 

After many years of making artwork to process my relationship with my dad, I knew that I wanted to make a garment about my mother, who died when I was 16.  I anticipated that it would be a pain-filled and traumatic experience. I felt the challenge of being in a group of women, however, it felt like a safe space to be vulnerable.

As the course unfolded, part of me wanted a template/pattern to follow. Most of the others were upcycling a skirt or blouse. Throughout the course guided meditation journeys were really helpful to get in touch with my subconscious. It was great to do this in a group and be witnessed and to witness other’s discoveries.

My initial idea was to make a circle skirt based on one my mother wore in a photograph of her and I taken when I was a baby. 

On paper, I designed a circle skirt to look like a sundial, bought a vintage pattern from the 1950s and cut out the fabric; then ended up making something completely different.   In the Healing Skirt course, I had the space to think I knew, then didn’t know, then finally ended up knowing (what to make). 

I kept picturing the perfect skirt that I might find in a charity shop, then finally found the perfect one in March.  This is when my ideas came together and I made mine with an appliqued sun, flowers, swallows flying and I handstitched the words ‘(You) Put love into everything that you do’ on it.  This was something my mom said to me when I was very young.

So my skirt wound up being happy and beautiful. 

I realized that my deep love of swallows began when I was in my mother’s arms in that long ago time.  We were at Mission San Juan Capistrano, where swallows return each year in the summertime.  This would have been my first and probably only time seeing swallows in California.

I eventually made my Sundial Circle Skirt which I’ll write about in a future post.