A handmade life

Why making and mending are acts of love

This week, I sat on the worn-in sofa at a friend’s studio. We met to discuss an upcoming exhibition and workshop, exploring how our practices could come together to reflect on place, making and community. One phrase we kept returning to was: ‘Everything you have and hold comes from the earth.’

As an artist working with textiles and plant dyes, I know this to be true. When I dye and stitch, I am working with the land. My colours are created from nature — twigs, leaves, flowers, barks and roots. I use natural materials, linen, cotton, calico and wool.

As my hands pass over the threads, they meet the many other hands that have grown, harvested, collected, spun and woven the cloth into form.

Raw linen. Part of a piece for The Nature of Colour, my ‘24 solo exhibition.

Take a moment to recognise this connection in the clothes you're wearing, the bedsheets you slept in, or your favourite kitchen towel; the one stained and worn but so full of love from the many Sunday lunches shared.

Many hands make this life. The farmers whose weathered palms tend the crops and spend hours growing the food we eat; the potters who shape plates and vases from clay; the woodworkers who create shelves and tables that don’t just hold objects but living memories. Artists who sculpt, paint, weld and draw meaning from and into our lives.

A handmade life isn’t just for those with a craft. A handmade life is darning your socks with your favourite pink yarn. It’s spending hours at the flea market looking for the perfect mug for your lover’s hand. It’s filling a chipped, vintage bowl with wonky apples and sharing a crumble with someone who needs a little sweetness.

When we make something, we put ourselves into it: our time, our skill, our patience, our generosity, our way of seeing. It’s an act of care and an act of resistance in a world that wants us to have more, better, newer, faster.

Handmade bowls and tea mat made from samples.

The beauty of a handmade life lies in accepting imperfection. It’s the fingerprints accidentally fired into the clay of your favourite mug. The skipped stitch in your grandfather’s wool jumper. The marks on the kitchen table from years (maybe even decades) of celebrations, disagreements and ordinary days. These lived-in details are what make our objects personal and meaningful.

This love I have for making was passed down from my Nan, a woman whose hands worked beauty, not out of leisure but necessity. In a world that didn’t always offer the luxury of ‘new,’ she taught me that care, patience and repair were the gifts we gave to the things we hold close.

Before her hands became too fragile, she could easily tailor a skirt or knit a jumper in a weekend. Growing up in a working-class family, mending and repairing wasn’t only a craft but a need, a required skill to make what we had last for many years, like my Nan did with my mother’s school shirts, cleverly repurposed from my uncles.

My favourite pyjamas remind me of her. They are soft and frayed, mended with patches of fabric and even a quilt square gifted to me by a friend. Though they are worn in and wearing thin, each time I repair them, I’m gifting myself a little comfort.

I’m allowing these trousers, and myself, to be imperfect, to be put back together. Not the same as before, but changed with a new colour, a different texture and the kindness of others.

Pyjamas, mended and patched.

It’s often easier to reach for something new, to embrace the convenience of the quickly made, than to slow down and repair what we have. But I think it is always worth it when we have a home filled with carefully selected and well-loved objects and garments. Each with a story to tell, one we feel in our hands when we use it.

In building a life not only of handmade objects but of mended ones, we weave ourselves into each day, creating memories that are meant to be felt, shared, and passed on for generations.

A handmade life, at its centre is a life full of love — for ourselves, for each other, for the many hands that shaped us, and for the earth that holds us all. In every quiet act of making and mending, we slowly build something lasting, a life shaped with care and intention, one small stitch at a time.

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