Love Letter to My Younger Self
2024
22 x 27 inches
Made with fabric, yarn, embroidery floss, ribbon, & ink on fabric
In this work, I wanted to explore the idea of girlhood and turning 20. In the media, I’d been seeing two things: little girls rushing to become women, and women attempting to get their girlhood back. What started as a piece about girlhood, quickly turned into something about and for my younger self. Although I wanted to keep this project more broad, so it would be more relatable, I felt very attached to this idea of reclaiming my girlhood by honoring my younger self through this small quilt. I wanted to create something that gave me and my audience a sense of nostalgia about childhood. I also wanted an aspect of it to be related to my friends who I lived through girlhood with, which is shown through the embroidered hearts. On the back of the quilt, there’s a whole other aesthetic to it, as it has more of a scrapbook look to it. The idea for the back started out as a collage of photos I wanted to use to portray girlhood, but turned out to be more so about social media and looked like a Pinterest board. The back portrays another view of girlhood, girlhood in aesthetic photos, on social media, and through popular quotes. Another important aspect of the entire piece was that most of the techniques I used were/are techniques that artsy kids could easily pick up, techniques I tried when I was little.
