Needlework Therapy

 

• Rights Holder: © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra / Gift of Les Hollings and the Australian Textiles Fund, 1989 / Bridgeman ImagesLicense Type: All Rights Reserved
• My day was spent doing paper piercing patchwork at the Crafty Owl Studio. It is more than 30 years since I last practised this skill, and I had forgotten how therapeutic and Mindful it is. 
• At the beginning of the 19th century the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry also recognised its therapeutic nature. Needlework was a tool which "offered not only a practical skill, but also an enlightened state of contemplation, whereby the focus required for the act of stitching would have allowed the maker to enter a mental space removed from the everyday."
• Fry and her 'ladies' committees' tried to improve the conditions for women prison inmates by donating needlework supplies, including "two pounds of patchwork pieces." She thought this type of needlework was of particular benefit because the intricate work required a big investment of time. This was something the female convicts had plenty of on a three-month voyage from London to Tasmania in 1841. A result of their work was the beautiful Rajah Quilt pictured above.
• Writing prompt: Do you practise a skill that is therapy for you? It might not be patchwork, or even some other type of needlework, but maybe knitting, crochet, drawing, painting or playing a musical instrument? Perhaps it's something that you haven't done for many years. Whatever it is, write about it and explore its therapeutic nature.
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