The winter term had a new brief – WORN OUT. I decided to use my mother’s sewing box as the basis of this. I have looked after it since her home was sold and she moved to a care home near where I live. She died in March 2018 of Alzheimer’s and other ailments of old age. She really was worn out and ready to go. The box, was worn out so I had it restored and I now use it as my sewing box. So, it gets a lot of use and I keep a connection to mum each time I use it. I kept the contents together as they were found. A mix of all sorts, knitting needles and patterns, left over wool, some things had nothing to do with sewing or knitting, hairpins, a pretty empty perfume spray, inner soles for shoes and so on. Who put them there? I wondered if she had ‘lost’ some of these things by not recalling that she had put them in the sewing box. It was not just the box but what my mother left behind unsaid. I was wondering why she made the decisions she made and wondered if I’d find the answers in her things. So, the box gave me lots to “worry through” Rachel Whiteread style.
Sewing box before restoration 
A little out of focus, but this is the box and its contents when I opened it full of all sorts of stuff
After restoration 
The empty perfume spray
I restored the box shortly after receiving it. A bit soon I think. Still, it meant that it was used and cared for. Here on the left, you see mum in her nurse’s uniform early on in her life. The long scissors are the type used to take out stitches from a wound. She was always engaged and animated when something medical was required. The case contains a manicure set. She had beautiful hands, fingers and nails but never wore nail varnish. The perfume bottle is lovely. It had been a lavender spray.
I drew some items from her box and then used the drawings to create a layered picture. A layered collage I guess. I was thinking about how her memory had slowly prevented her from knowing the names and functions of things she had used all her life.
Inches on one side and centimetres on the other – passage of time
Photographs of the contents give them new life. I could have thrown them away as junk and perhaps I will one day but for now they can stay with me.
Just a few of the items I found in the sewing box. I really like the yellow quilted fabric from the inside of mum’s box. The darning needle was put there by mum. My plan is to renew the quilting at some point in the future, making the quilting myself.
These paintings arose from an experiment with colour. Paint worries me, so I don’t use it a lot but I’d like to. I chose yellow as my experimental palette. Played around with different hues. Thinking all the time about the sewing box and mum’s ability as a home maker and dress maker for me and my sister. Her sewing expressions stick with me, “Hold still or I’ll prick you” or when the fabric didn’t sit well she’d say, “It pouks”. Not in the English dictionary as far as I can see but I use it as well. It is a good description.
Where was this taking me?
What was I to do with the painting? Keeping the spirit of “worn out” and the sewing box, also prompted out of a kind of unsatisfied inertia into action by a fellow student I decided to tear it up and reassemble it with thread and pieces of fabric which I had dyed. I built into it crevices and pleats. I was thinking how internal my mother’s world had been – hidden.
Going through Selby, passing by the Abbey in early November 2018
I stopped off here on my way to a service at a church in a nearby village to remember the people who had been buried there, including my mother.
The Abbey was adorned and lots of people were there taking pictures and visiting the Abbey. I joined them and then went on my way to the service later in the day for my mother and others. It was an odd experience for a non-believer.
Sue makes marks 