BREAKING POINT: LET’S TALK
In 2017, Jo Westfoot designed a unique and striking quilt about mental health that doubled as a cathartic medicine!
Your quilt, Breaking Point: Let’s Talk, helped you out of a hard time. Tell us a little about the process.
The concept of feeling broken made me think of exploding shattered glass. The fragility of the human soul is a bit like glass, we can take so much, but we all have a breaking point. I wanted to create a block that could be used to show breaking and then healing.
Deciding what words to add to the quilt was cathartic to me as it made me fully assess a situation that had happened in my life. Translating those feelings into words helped me heal.
The quilt has four blocks that represent Breaking, Broken, Healing and Healed, with colours symbolising emotion. Tell us a little about how you navigated these decisions at the design stage. The colours in the blocks were representing the human soul and I think that should be represented as colourful. I opted to use darker fabrics for the Breaking block to represent the feeling of everything caving in on us when we are struggling to see the light. For the Broken block, it was about ‘seeing red’ and being totally broken, so had to contain simply red and background fabric. For the Healing block, I used a combination of dark and mid tones to show that the light was starting to get through and healing had commenced. And for the Healed block, I used all the lighter tones from the rainbow fabrics to signify feeling lighter and brighter.
What made you decide to incorporate words in both the fabric choice and quilting design?
I am a strong believer in talking about problems to aid the healing process. The subtle text print used for the background fabric was chosen to represent the fact that whilst you are polarised on your own situation, life around you ticks on as normal. Life goes on. Having people to talk to helped me put words to my feelings, which sometimes can be hard to do on your own.
Looking back, how has your quilting practise and self-care changed since the creation of Breaking Point?
I think I realised how important it is for me to slow down and have time for creativity every week, or even every day. It keeps me more even-tempered and grounded. It’s also helped me to realise that you need to focus on the things and people that bring you joy.
Find Jo @thecraftynomadfleet and read more about her Breaking Point quilt at thecraftynomad.co.uk