A Needle and Thread: A Reflection of Stitching Memory and Place
Authored by UMIH Intern Hanako Teranishi
Toni Morrison’s Beloved and a piece of fabric with embroidered flowers and text. Courtesy of Hanako Teranishi
My beloved friend Alison is moving back home to Scotland to pursue an MFA in creative writing. I am moving to British Columbia to pursue an MA in English literature. We met at the University of Manitoba, in an English class called “Shakespeare and Intersectionality.” We sat next to each other, only slightly recognizing each other from a previous Zoom class during COVID-19 but we said nothing. Alison was the first to reach out. Soon, we became close friends. With Alison, I became someone who holds another’s hand in moments of anxiety or admiration, and someone who says, “I love you” and “I love you too.” Now two years later, Alison is moving back home to Scotland; I am moving to British Columbia. We are leaving Winnipeg, the place where our roots intertwined.
In Winter 2025, Dr. Sonja Boon, the current Writer-in-Residence of the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture, facilitated a two-part writing workshop called “Small Things: Cross Stitch Provocations” where we learned about the history of cross stitch and engaged with writing through cross stitch. As a group, we discussed the history of cross stitch, beginning with samplers from the eighteenth and nineteenth century made by young girls and women to demonstrate their needlework skills. We discussed how cross stitch has also been used as a tool for self-expression and record keeping, specifically for women. Dr. Boon presented historical and contemporary examples of cross stitch as a form of protest and record keeping. She shared, for example, work by Agnes Richter (1844-1918) and Par Nair (2023).
In Winter 2025, Alison wrapped a gift in fabric, a light blue cloth with small detailing of repeating leaves. She told me I could keep it. Dr. Boon asked us to cross stitch a short message in the weeks between her two workshops. These messages could be messages of protest, love, or radical resistance. Our exploration of cross stitch was a means of engaging with a slow process of writing that allowed us to sit and process the complexities of injustice.
I decided to cross-stitch on the fabric Alison gave me. I cut out a small square, picked a red thread, and stitched the message “the existence of Love is everywhere” using backstitch. The fabric was patterned, and I chose to cross stitch over some of the stems and leaves with a darker green. I added baby blue flowers using a French knot to the ends of the green stems. My writing was inspired by a workshop I attended a week before where a group of us wrote love letters to our trans and queer siblings. During this workshop I wrote a mini zine titled “the evidence of love…” I kept poking my fingers with the needle as I pushed it through the front of the fabric. The tinge of pain made me think about the nicks I gave myself while lino-cutting stamps for the zine. Cross stitch and zines are accessible mediums for sharing writing and art. Both forms provide a more accessible physical outlet for sharing writing than traditional publishing and calls for submissions. They also highlight the maker’s creativity as both are generative activities that give the author freedom not only on what they will write but how they write it, its orientation, what accompanies it, and more. Both the zine and cross stitch I created were products made almost entirely from my hands. My words transformed the canvases they were written on.
Embroidery by Hanako Teranishi with text “the existence of LOVE is everywhere.”
We displayed our cross-stitch pieces publicly during the second workshop, hanging them on a railing on campus with tags saying “take me,” “give me away,” and “pass me on.” Our work was a temporary art display that was meant to be taken down by its audience and passed along. We tied them to a railing with a bow so they could easily be undone. While sewing, I thought about how the message I stitched originated as a love letter for trans people of colour. I worried that our work would be vandalized or thrown out. I loved what we made but felt cynical about how it would be received. However, while we were putting them up, I felt my body release the built-up cynicism and I felt admiration replace it. I admired the words we stitched, the time put into the words, and the beauty of what we created. I also found joy in the temporality of the display and in knowing that slowly the pieces would be taken and brought into the world through new eyes and hands.
The scrap fabric Alison gave me is somewhere in the world. It is embroidered with my love: my love for Alison and for my trans siblings. The person who carries my stitching does not know this, they may never know this, yet the message of love remains in red thread. The feeling of loss that came with giving my stitching away to the unknown is replaced with joy. The joy comes from knowing that my hands can create objects of love and share them with the world, a world that too often feels unloving. Our hands are proof of the love we are capable of.
I have been embroidered with love and care from the relations in my life. I am not unlike the blue scrap.