A few years before my Grannie Katie died, she and my Grandad
gave me a collection of fabric scraps for Christmas. I was about ten years old,
or maybe younger, and I opened the gift sat on their living room floor
surrounded by fiercely bright winter sunlight.
They weren’t in a box, but instead arranged neatly in a flat
plastic wallet. I remember vague colours and patterns – some Laura Ashley-style
florals in black and white, a piece in pink pyjama stripes and small cuttings in
varying shades of yellow and green. But mostly I pulled things out in handfuls,
rubbing each piece between my fingers and thumbs for a few brief seconds before
reaching in for more.
Thinly ridged corduroy. Rough cottons. A long piece of black
velvet that had been folded over and sewn so it was beautifully soft on both
sides. A deep turquoise green sateen with a satisfyingly smooth rolled hem.
Slippery synthetic silks in faded pastels. Something scratchy and awful in
maroon with shocks of loose threads hanging off it in feathery knots. More
velvet, this time in brown with an underside that caught on dry skin. A tiny piece
of flannel with raised checks. Scratchy sheer material with purple and blue
flowers that looked like bruises. A pink satin with a premade buttonhole and
stiff netting lining. Something tissue-paper thin and gauzy with raised velvety
leaf skeletons. A stiff green scrap with a scalloped hem.
I’m not sure what I did with these pieces straight away, but
some time later my mum and I started making a patchwork, which we only finished
after my Grannie had died. Though we arranged the pattern loosely into colour
stories, I wanted to gather together as many different textures as possible. A
silky piece of something yellow sat next to a piece of lurid orange acrylic
fur, which lay close to a wine-coloured corduroy. I made a sun in green satin,
surrounded by rays of blue and green material in varying degrees of softness.
The thought of texture is still with me when I contemplate
fabric, but now I think about it in terms of clothing choices. In clothes shops,
particularly when searching through vintage pieces, I rub my forefinger and
thumb over the fabric – that same instinctive finger movement from my tenth
Christmas. It helps me find the things I might love and distinguish the ones I
am definitely going to hate. I can’t stand to wear polyester or synthetic silks
and satins and my tiny, subconscious appraisal of clothes between my two digits
lets me easily cast these materials aside in search of wool, velvet, cotton,
anything more comfortable to the touch.
Strangely, this movement of my hands has developed into a
nervous habit. Whenever I feel panic rising in my lungs, I dig my thumbnail
into the underskirt of my skirt hem and run it through over and over, the
repetitive physical motion breaking through my internal anxieties and grounding
me in reality. I also do this with buttons, collars and necklaces or any
jewellery I am wearing. I stopped wearing rings because my tendency to take
them off and roll them between my fingers was rubbing off the plate and turning
them copper or green. I repeat this motion constantly when I am making clothes,
when choosing bed sheets, doing anything that brings me into contact with
material. It has become a part of the way I navigate my world, intrinsic to my
being and my idiosyncrasies. It keeps me comforted and calm and, if I cast my
mind back to its origins, connected to my Grannie Katie.
