These handstitched quilts are conversations with my late mother—a white American from Nebraska who married a Punjabi man in Chicago in 1969. Produced in the Kawandi-style, where small scraps are held by a single spiral stitched line, the quilts explore how we navigated making space for Indian culture in our American household. Together and apart, we grappled with collectivist social mores, nonwestern gender roles, family expectations, and the tenets of filial piety. Created in the early weight of grief, these quilts gather what remains—memory, inheritance, care, and the continuing speech of cloth.

She Wore Color (more than color wore her), shown above, presents my mother’s sari blouse on one side and a composition of fabric patches made from one of her saris, one of my saris, and raw silk we purchased together in India in 1992. 

What Red Can Hold, shown below, is composed of fabrics with multiple lives: a bedspread my mother made into a skirt for me when I was six; Indian fabric purchased in Amsterdam, made into a dress I loved, then deconstructed; scraps of cyanotype printed wool; and unsewn textiles my aunts brought from India.