Inspired by the arpilleras of Latin America, the project ‘A Stitch in Time’ started earlier this year, to bring communities within the Liverpool City Region together.
It encouraged creative storytelling from the perspective of women via the traditional style of arpilleras, hand-sewn ‘appliqué,’ that include 3D textiles to illustrate their stories.
The project positively impacted the mental health of the participants, and saw new friendships form as the group shared stories and memories, allowing them to escape the daily pressures of life.
On March 1st, the doors of St George’s Hall were opened to the public and guests, revealing a diaspora of artwork, each detailing stories from different communities that blew away expectations, inspiring others to join future projects and try their hand at making their very own arpilleras.
A Stitch in Time: A Celebration of Latin American Culture
Stories are a means of passing down traditions, teaching history and cultural norms and helping people connect with their cultural and societal identity. Folktales, myths, and legends often reflect a society’s collective beliefs and heritage, and the narratives and oral traditions keep records of the past, ensuring that important events and lessons are not forgotten. Women from different communities in Latin America used arpilleras, exquisitely detailed hand-sewn, ‘appliqué’, and often three-dimensional textile pictures to illustrate the stories of the lives of the women, especially during the 1973 Chilean coup d’état, when arpilleras were used to document and denounce oppression, where all normal channels of free expression were closed.
Arpilleras were also used to tell stories of their sorrows and concerns in their search for their missing loved ones. They were historically created in the home and sewn by hand and were pictorial narratives in which bits of discarded cloth are appliqued onto a burlap backing, depicting activities and imaginative images of the region.
A Stitch In Time was started in 2021 with the initial project teaching basic textile skills. Since then, the group has grown with this being their third in a series of textile storytelling with greater complexity and use of techniques learned during the workshop sessions.
The 2023 project, based on the creation of arpilleras, was developed to engage a wider community within the Latin American diaspora in the Liverpool City Region and in developing knowledge of Latin American culture, to celebrate cultural diversity in relationship to personal identity through the production by each woman, of a piece of creative textile inspired by the arpilleras from Chile, using a variety of techniques from printing and dyeing, collage and applique, embellishments through hand stitching, and 3D elements through quilting and soft sculptures.
Some of the Latin American families who attended the exhibition launch at the historic St Georges Hall Visitor Centre on March 1st, 2024, were interested in developing their own arpillera stories as a way of remembering their home countries and were inspired by what they saw and the innovative ways in which fabrics could be used.
They were able to see that all the stories, despite deriving from different global communities, had their roots in common themes of family life, being out in nature, and being able to tell the stories of what made them happy. The act of recalling these memories, designing them, looking for found material and then being able to create something beautiful was a means of escape from all the daily pressures, and very good for their mental well-being.
The women in the A Stitch In Time project celebrate cultural diversity and their cultural roots through personal journeys in their arpillera, recalling and sharing happy memories, hopes and dreams that create a sense of belonging and unity, helping people find common ground and shared experiences.
The project helped them form friendships, learn skills from each other, care for each other if challenges arose, and encourage each other when necessary to keep going.
They were thrilled to hear praises heaped upon their work which boosted their confidence levels. Guests and members of the public were heard saying that their expectations had been exceeded with the exhibited work which had tremendous levels of skills and detailed narratives, and they had been inspired to either join future projects or attempt to make arpilleras themselves.
By Maya Mitter
