Woom

Woom takes its title from her son's spelling of womb. The wholecloth is a baby swaddling muslin. Across its surface: a burgundy oval for the womb; red and white ovals for her two children; four small burgundy ovals for the miscarriages that came before. An embroidered elevation of the family's north London home provides the last enclosure. A tree carries "I Love You." Their footprints are stitched in.

I made Woom directly after Body Forensic. Where that piece approached my body as evidence, this one started from a different question: what had that same body offered, with warmth and love?

The title came from my son's spelling of womb. I kept it. The wholecloth is a baby swaddling muslin: soft, associated with care, labour, and the first enclosures a mother makes around a child. It also carries constriction, which felt honest.

The burgundy oval at the centre is the womb. The red and white ovals are my two children, born twenty months apart but conceived at the same time through IVF; I chose fabrics from a shared collection to hold that fact in the cloth. Four small burgundy ovals mark the miscarriages that came before the births. The piece is celebratory. The grief could not be left out.

The ovals trace a route out of the womb and into the world. At the edge of the composition, an embroidered elevation of our north London home provides the last enclosure. To the right, a tree grows tall with "I Love You" stitched quietly along it: what I want to be for my children, sturdy, offering shelter, with roots to return to. Their footprints are embroidered into the surface.