Healing Emotions Through Design and Handwork

“Humanity has expressed its emotions through different means like poetry and artwork. The purpose of this project was to let my emotions heal by working with my hands, designing, and dyeing to satisfy my emotions of missing my home country and family during COVID19. Art experiences positively benefit people's health and well-being and be a powerful, emotional, and cultural tool in improving the quality of life for individuals and society (Fleischer & Grehan, 2016). Doing artwork related to one's culture could strengthen the homesick individual and provide emotional therapy (Dieterich-Hartwell & Koch, 2017). This project applies "shibori" specifically stitching resist to protect the area from dye and create a diamond resisted shape. The fabric was bamboo rayon. The natural dyes were logwood purple to symbolize my current school's color and where I am currently living during the pandemic. Marigold represents the golden desert sand that constitutes most of my homeland Saudi Arabia. The dye process included scouring the fabric with detergent and soda ash for an hour at 100 C. Then, the fabric underwent tannin pretreatments of either gallnut extract at 10% to the weight of fiber (WOF) or pomegranate at 8% WOF. Next, the fabrics were mordanted with aluminum acetate at 10% WOF (Schrader, 2010). Marigold was used at 20% WOF and the logwood at 1% WOF and dyed at 90 C. The size of the ruana is 124 cm wide and 145 cm long; were sewn together and then decorated with sashiko embroidery. This creative work helped me to overcome and empower the emotional situation I was going through, and it also can be a reference for other people struggling with bad situations to heal by doing creative artwork.”

— Khadijah Baaqil

Model: Destiny Smith ︱ Photographer: Jonas Herrera

References 

Dieterich-Hartwell, R., & Koch, S. C. (2017). Creative arts therapies as temporary home for refugees: Insights from literature and practice. Behavioral Sciences, 7(4), 69. 

Fleischer, S., & Grehan, M. (2016). The arts and health: Moving beyond traditional medicine. Journal of Applied Arts & Health, 7(1), 93-105.