Sewing and other attachments

bunting banner for 'in stitches' girls' group

We started a sewing group for teenage girls last week at work, called 'In Stitches'. This is the banner, made from an Ikea upholstery remnant and using iron-on vliesofix (?) for the applique of the letters. The individual flags are machine stitched onto wide blue bias binding, which is folded in half and pinned into place, enclosing the top of the flag. It almost forms a circle when the edges are drawn together, this was for the purpose of photographing the banner. I am very excited about this group!

felt collage: 'secure attachment'

felt collage: 'insecure ambivalent/resistant'

felt collage: 'insecure avoidant'

felt collage: 'disorganised/disorientated'

These four collages were created by me a few years ago, in response to reading 'Circles of attachment: Art therapy albums' by Joanna Clyde Findlay, Margarette Erasme Lathan and Noah Hass-Cohen, in Art therapy and clinical neuroscience edited by Noah Hass-Cohen and Richard Carr. Most of the book is heavy-going, but this chapter describes a delightful project in which art therapy students created fabric 'attachment journals' to illustrate the four main attachment styles, and to ultimately explore their understanding of their own attachment style.

Some of the trainee therapists found that their attachments became more secure, as a result of doing the project.

I had to make one as well, since it combined book-making, felting, fabric collage, machine embroidery and of course, Attachment Theory: Bowlby and Ainsworth's framework for understanding early infant-carer relationships. I can remember thinking at the time of making the collages, my attachment style was probably insecure, (either avoidant or ambivalent) although now I am not so sure.

And now I am reading about attachment again, in a prescribed reading for my Social Work Masters, starting next Monday. I found it interesting to learn that Bowlby, once a follower of Melanie Klein, was rejected by the Freudians for emphasising the real environment of the infant (i.e. the primary caregiver) rather than the 'psychic projections' or fantasies of the baby. This gave me some insight into why attachment theory was so unpopular when I was studying art therapy at Goldsmiths in the 1980's, as the theory was based on Klein and the 'object relations' school.

The reason this theory is in a book on neuroscience and art therapy, indicates (I think) that neuroscience is now proving that Bowlby and Ainsworth's attachment theory was right. Sorry Melanie!

I seem to be managing without my laptop, although am writing on a borrowed Mac, which is making this slightly harder than usual. And I know I am about to get much busier...

This is an interesting quiz from Tamsin's blog, which i mentioned recently: find your political compass. Relieved I was in the same quadrant to Gandhi, Dalai Lama and Mandela. Phew.

more later.