I know! I am still not good at doing selfies! But I wanted to show you at least one action snapshot of my new beloved handmade garment, a type of bralette, just completed...

It is made from two corners of a beautiful hand-stitched cross-stitch tablecloth, with the upper straps coming from the edges of a sheet or suchlike, and the under-breast straps being straps from a former apron. I practically made it all-in-one, though it took a couple of days - but I did not stop to document it during the creative process, as I was so deeply immersed and concentrated in it. This morning, having worn it happily for a few days, I can share around it - BUT I wrote about the depth of the experience of making it, a few days ago: it's a deep dive....

rose plant shadows on the handstitched rose pattern: mystical union of co-creation between the original creator of the stitches and myself - and the elements...

Sewing is one of my earliest creative outlets: I made clothing for my dolls, had access to threads and books on dressmaking from my mum and gran, and was a passionate participant in our regular jumble sales in our village hall from almost my earliest memories.

I began making clothes in earnest, as I entered high school (around 11 years old), and we started expressing our individuality through clothing. I used a beautiful sample of screenprinted cotton - which my dad had made in a college design course he'd taken years before - and crafted a tight but functional skirt. It was a white background with stylised yellow leaves and flowers on. I think that it had a split and perhaps also a bow on it. There must have been a zip or buttons too. I remember how proud I was, responding to queries about it, that I'd made it myself. I also remember how I was bullied for being different, and was kicked from behind whilst wearing this favourite new garment, and this certianly affected how I felt about being vulnerable in being different.

When we are small, and are being schooled in incredibly tense - often abusive - situations, around bigger children and strict adults, it is natural that we might recognise quickly that it's safer to not stand out. I puttered along making more conservative items, but felt more and more body shame during my teens, with an accumulation of negative influences that eventually built into deep neuroses.

I made two runs of elastic to have the front of the bralette be flexible and comfortable

I loved being around lots more different and eccentric folks in art school and in the cities I lived in, but lost that initial momentum around actually making clothing from scratch. I took criticism painfully seriously for decades, as I was regularly ridiculed randomly for wearing quirky or unusual clothes: this is an aspect of everyday sexism that was more prevalent in the past: a habit of strangers to single out any woman wearing an item that expressed her uniqueness, her humour, her sexuality and strength - and openly diminish rather than support her.

In my vulnerability, this was excrutiating. And my vulnerability seemed to magnetise folks who needed an outlet for their hatred of woman: their disassociation from their own feminine aspect.

It wasn't until I settled in one place (when I bought the Arthouse in 2011) and was able to shed some of the fears that I had of being effectively persecuted for wearing things that I loved. I went through at least two significant relationships in which I ploughed through the laborious disentanglement from the abusive habits of men who feed of women's energy. This happened a lot through my wearing clothes that were fun, quirky, and very much outside of the parameters of what was normalised in this particolare zone of rural Italy: I would be subtly demeaned, and this would reverberate for days or even longer - sometimes accumulating into a weight on my shoulders of shame and fear of being profoundly ugly and unattractive.

I love the mixture of machine-made, older hand-stitches, and my own variety of stitching according to what I am trying to hold together: I LOVE how this unfolds organically, and how it marks possibly even a century or more of connecting stitches as I rework the old.

Most cultures have some underlying currents that sit like a web of mud around women's body image. It takes a warrior of the womb to stand up straight, rooted, breathe deeply and step forward; dropping all the clutter of embarassment and daring to celebrate the full spectrum of what we are.

And I did this! I rummaged in 50c clothing and vintage linen tables at the markets, and enjoyed being able to get practically a new wardrobe for a few Euros. This passion grew and grew, until I finally acknowledged where I'd been coerced into conforming and into being much less in pleasure in my dressing up. I recognised where I was being complicite in the suppression of my colourful expression, and began to push against my own resistance to my vibrant beauty and my power to bring that into the community.

I suppose I'd been sewing my own clothes in fits and starts for a few years, before I dove in with a commitment to a vision: I really do want to be a creator of meaningful clothing! In the least I want my own clothes and accessories to be funky, beautiful and functional. And if others would like the kinds of items I make, then I am very happy to also make more clothes for them. I began to take up requests for bags and adjustments, and set myself a load of interesting challenges using favourite fabrics, sheets, old or ill-fitting garments... I played with textures and sought peace in the making, in the hand stitching and the deep quiet of long sessions joining segments, hemming, fitting buttonholes and zips. I joined the Hive Needlework Monday community and found much-needed encouragement towards improving my skills, presenting my projects, reaching a goal or dream of creating e.g. my own underwear, a perfect underskirt, a natural-material-ed dress that brought me energetic protection...

Once I got the hang of letting the fabric guide me, and out of the bad habit of trying to push my trite viewpoint into a garment, things began to flow gloriously, and I started to feel quite capable. But not just that: I started to shed the skins of my neuroses and to gain an incredible sense of purposefulness in dressing myself from head to two. I began to see the symbology of our buying foreign-made clothing churned out of toxic factories by enslaved peoples. I began to feel the immense vitality of the completion of a healthy circle of expression, as I reclaimed the Queendom of my second skin. It was truly revelatory. The mystical quality of my body seemed to return, piece by piece, as my new wardrobe developed: each item being a shining effort that made me smile in my whole body just looking at it. As my first collection is growing, it has a wonderful air of continuity and significance to it. It is unfolding alchemically, as my mastery reveals itself in each finished garment ever more confidently.

I decided to cross over the two breast parts, as when I constructed it at first, it was quite big! Plus I wanted it to feel more solid and protective.

It was particularly poignient to make my first bralette - or my first draping of my heart flowers with the perfect and meaningful fabric - made in this vintage cross-stitched cotton. It began as an old tablecloth: I bought quite a few of these, and of hand-stitched and shell-buttoned cushion covers, with which I had no idea at the time of what I wanted to recreate. Working spontaneously, as always, the idea came, and it came simply as a first step. This is such an important aspect of the wholistic creative process: being courageous enough to take the step - and the subsequent steps - whilst having no idea of what all the steps will be to complete the thing! Not even knowing whether it is possible, practical or if it will make something I'll love in the end. This is the beauty of making something with heart and intention, though: it ALWAYS shines with the perfection of the handmade, the art-full, the time spent and the focus of fullest attention MAKE it wonderfully REAL and tangibly attractive. It has the depth of beauty that comes with that focus of love into the initial choosing of the fabric, into the dedication to the making, and onwards into the unhurried process of completing a creation enriched with time and care.

the manequin was busy with this chaotic beginning of a possible dress project - this is using the left-overs of the tablecloth that the bralette is made from

There can be no more important garments than underwear: their need to be soft and friendly, pretty and substantial, and their functionality to be in line with the rest of our clothing layers. A right-aligned underwear should act as barrier and also magical protector of our vulnerable and sensitive parts - and most bought clothing is in fact carrying layers of negative influences - from the unethical origins of its fabrication to the toxic materials to wrong-fitting-ness to its illusory nature in hiding our neuroses or enlivening our numbedness... I had a realisation in wearing this magical garment in particular, that I am returning the Life to my clothing, and thus to my vital force and wider aura: I am correcting that which was suppressed from my youngest age, and flourishing into the more expansive expression of greater self - which feels much more connected, interrelated and symbiotic with all things.

more details from the new project, also using at the back side the apron whose straps made the bralette straps

Putting our own house in order - especially our second skin - can have massive positive rippling effects. It is one of the areas in which our energy and sweat equity are harvested from us, and we are left much less happy than we can and should be. I vision the world awakening through ALL the areas which we've been convinced to out-source, and our hands waking up our hearts and minds, as they return to meaningul and purposeful work - work which rewards us not only during the action of the labour, but also through the glorious and original creations which appear as if by magic, when we complete our projects....

Manifestation is our divine inheritance, and we are collectively returning to the awareness of what we are capable of manifesting.

I hope you enjoyed this deep-dive! Do comment and share if you feel called to... I send love and merit-gained, radiating out from my practise and the Arthouse...

😍

www.claregaiasophia.com