Maternal Cartography

Maternal Cartography records the points of physical contact between a mother's body and her children, now ten and twelve. A sheet was laid between them and the outlines traced; these became the appliquéd shapes across hand-dyed cotton. The contour lines rippling outward follow the basting pins beneath: the moment of contact between a quilt's layers. What remains of a body that has been, for years, partly someone else's?

Maternal Cartography continues the 1:1 series, but asks a different question from its predecessors. Where earlier works read my body as a fixed, observable form, this one asks what it feels like to inhabit a body that is also inhabited by others.

The coloured shapes are maps of contact. I worked over two days: a sheet laid between me and my children, the shapes of touch traced. Those outlines were cut and translated into appliquéd cotton, set against hand-dyed pink.

The dyeing is its own act of making. I lowered strips of cotton into a single pot, starting with the palest wash, adding more dye between each dip. Each strip came out a shade deeper than the last. One bath holds the whole range.

The quilting extends the cartography. Contour lines ripple outward from each contact shape, following the basting pins beneath. Basting is the stage at which a quilt's layers are first brought into contact, before they're permanently joined. To quilt along those points is to stitch the moment of touching into the surface.

Across the cloth are the words my children use for touch: their vocabulary for different kinds of cuddle, hold, and lean. They wrote them. My stitches lie over their handwriting. Two hands at once.