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Writer's pictureGwen Edwards
Aug 28, 20215 min read

Aching absence, hugs missed in the pandemic

Updated: Dec 3, 2021

September - October 2020

The first in a series of quilts about hugs.


During the summer of 2020, the strange time between UK lockdown 1 and 2, I really missed being with my family. I started making a quilt about hugs, something I could perhaps send to them, my hug in the post.


Minimising interaction with the outside world, scared of what it might do to those in my bubble, I decided to just use the materials I had around me. My fabric stash was rich in old curtains, donated to me as part of a Morsbags project I had kicked off at the start of 2020, and put on hold soon after. Searching through the pile I found some large old roman blinds, and tore out the faded lining; the lines of stitching enveloping the rods had left their trace with punctured holes, like a line of dates marking time on a calendar. From a bag of old linens, many embroidered, tea stained and worn with time, I chose an old 1950s table cloth with machine applique and embroidery. And a box of old crochet and tatting yarns, collected and gifted to me over the years, yielded plenty of different weights of faded threads.


Sitting next to my work table on a low chair, I traced my entire arm onto brown paper, and then cut around it. I roped my husband in (the only other arms I had ready access to!), and drew around his arms.


In this quilt the appliqued arms hug you. The hand-stitched lines of quilting represent the energy of the hug, the gaps in-between are the absence of contact.


I chose to make the quilt top and backing from the lining of the well-used roman blinds; the sun has faded the pale pink colour unevenly – like faded memories, some remain stronger than others. Sections of this fabric remained quite strong in colour, and I carefully cut one pair of arms from this.


I needle-turn appliqued the fabric for these arms – working with the old fabric I had was frustrating, as the old blinds were quite thick, and wouldn’t iron nicely! But this itself was a lesson in patience, as I tried to figure out what the cloth wanted to do. The table cloth was far easier to work with, but was quite small – barely enough for the second pair of arms. In the corners of the table cloth were machine applique elements, so I carefully aligned the arm templates, and patched together the pieces so that these brightly coloured elements fell in the centre of the arm, and were more visible on the quilt top. This also meant that the cloth around the fingers was a little easier to deal with! Almost every scrap of this table cloth was needed, a highly optimised bit of hand patchwork.


Having appliqued the two pairs of arms onto the quilt top, mine and my husbands, I then used the templates again, and embroidered four more pairs of arms in different colours of fine crochet yarn. I layered the hugs, so that each appears to be reaching out for the other, yearning to hold one another, remembering what it is to be hugged by one you love.

Recycling from my stash to minimise outside interactions, lining from well-used roman blinds forms the top and backing; sunshine has faded the pale-pink colour unevenly – like faded memories, some remain stronger than others.


As I stitched the last of the applique arms, I joined a Heidi Parkes improv quilting workshop on zoom. Listening to the conversations with Heidi and the other course participants was joyous and inspiring, as we shared and stitched and learnt together. It enabled me to work out that I didn’t want to quilt the entire cloth, just parts of it. The gaps, the absence, were just as important. And the hand stitched lines of quilting became about the energy, the pressure of a hug, what makes a hug from one person we love different from another – even with our eyes closed, we know who is hugging us.


On this zoom call, Heidi encouraged us to share current projects, and I showed the appliqued arms. She was very generous with her knowledge, sharing the technique she uses for applique-ing fingers, and others on the course shared their tips – I love the way knowledge and ideas are shared within this community! Serendipitously, on the machine-appliqued pair of arms, I had placed the middle finger along a line of hardanger embroidery, creating a line of rhythmical voids. Heidi spotted this alignment on screen – she told me that in Indian culture, hand mudrās evolved for use in rituals and meditation; the Shunya Mudra uses the middle finger to represent the psychic gesture of void or emptiness. This discussion really amazed me: the power of absence, the energy around emptiness - and yet to receive this knowledge whilst on a virtual video call, in the absence of physical presence, this pandemic teaches us in so many ways.


The hand quilting is simple running stitch, following the outer lines of the arms, and then the middle finger on the embroidered arms. Parallel lines represent the flow of energy, the pressure of an embrace. Along the bottom edge, where there is some space beyond the hugs, I used French knots to quilt the fabrics together, in flowing lines and swirls.


I finished binding this quilt by wrapping the back around to the front – it seemed the most appropriate method!



I hope to make a series of quilts. I have already started the second hug quilt, joining our hugs with hugs from my parents, sister, and her children. They’ve sent me the templates of their arms through the post, and they now hang by the side of my desk - a little like a Halloween version of the templates you see hanging in the workshops of the amazing Fante Asafo Flag Makers!




Exhibitions & publications



The quilts in this series are,

  1. Aching absence, hugs missed in the pandemic (this quilt post)

  2. Experiments In Hug Telepathy #ExperimentsInHugTelepathy

  3. May I Hug You? #MayIHugYou

  4. (not yet made, still in my head) Hug Me


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