Stitches about our lives in times of pandemic: We go through the fabric and pull on the needle to take care of ourselves

Across various historical periods and locations, women have engaged in textile practice as a means of caring for both others and themselves. However, the potential of this practice to support women’s personal and collective care during the COVID-19 pandemic was constrained by the sudden increase in unpaid care work they largely shouldered alone. This study contributes to a growing body of research on the power of textile practice for women’s (self-) care, merging the methodologies of art practice to reflect on the researcher’s individual practice, and participatory textile making to explore the creative process with a group of women residing in the rural region of Dapa, Colombia, during the health crisis. The former provided insight into the therapeutic properties of textile practice as a strategy for self-care. The latter involved establishing The Textile Workshop of Dapa, a physical meeting place for women in rural settings to engage in textile creation while sharing life experiences and diverse knowledge in a mutually supportive backdrop. The findings underscore that women’s care in this context encompassed cultivating self-connection by carving out personal time and space outside the home. Textile practice fostered a sense of community through unhurried conversations interwoven with creative expression, and built collective memory by recounting emotive experiences with loved ones in the past and present. Additionally, the textile projects nurtured a deeper sense of belonging with the more-than-human world, and a growing empowerment–personal, collective and partially economic–which enabled the women to achieve more together than they could on their own. They also utilized digital tools to proudly document their region for the first time, through photos and videos, before immersing themselves in textile work. The study concludes by emphasizing the potential of textile practice to contribute to women’s (self-) care and urges the establishment of specific care spaces for them, alongside recognizing, reducing, and redistributing care work. Highlighting women’s care as a critical public concern, the work advocates for a more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable future in which the well-being of all species is valued.