Introductions
Hello lovely,
let’s get to know one another a little better.
There is a high probability you don’t know much about me. We’ve moved to a world where each of us has become a faceless entity behind our screens and our art. Our stories are blurred behind the scenes, yet it is our stories that make us human and help us connect with one another. Like many of you, I despair at the current state of the internet and the world. It’s become a place where turning on the news or any form of social media is like walking along the edge of an ice-covered cliff, just a step away from ruining your day. We are surrounded by, and bombarded with, negative messages, hate, and impatience. Most people I speak to are stressed, burned out, or feeling hopeless. Being stuck in those feelings leaves us very little room for each other or for understanding, and thus the cycle repeats. Let’s try to break that cycle, starting by getting to know each other a bit more. So let us enjoy a moment of our day together, and if you feel comfortable enough, I invite you to share a little bit about yourself below.
So hello lovely, my name is Bex and I currently live in the Swedish countryside with my partner, our daughter and two rescue dogs. I am originally from the UK, I spent 4 years living in Ireland before we eventually found ourselves settling here in 2015.
I never expected to end up in Sweden, it just sort of happened. My life has always had a funny way of pushing me to make big decisions, often following difficult circumstances and starting BX Stitchworks was no exception.
Ask me if I am a risk taker, I’ll say I’m not, but looking back at the decisions I’ve made to get me to this point, there’s no way that’s true. Here is a sprint overview of how I ended up here, embroidering on my own photographs. This is by no means a conclusive story of my entire life, but some key moments that may help you to know and understand me and why I do this a little better.
Adolescent whiplash.
My childhood and teenage years were troubled, to say the least. Filled with complicated family dynamics, bouts of trauma, poor school attendance and a lot of video games. I grew up in a household with very little money and was often a victim of bullying. Suffering from extreme social anxiety and PTSD, I did not expect to leave my teens. As a result I had no concrete plans for my future and found myself going with the flow a lot.
I chose to study graphic design at college purely because I had enjoyed dabbling in making pixel art and forum signatures and could not really think of what else to do. My GCSE results were reasonable given my attendance or lack of, but unfortunately I ended up missing several exams as a result of a serious infection which landed me in hospital. I was never given the chance to resit those I missed, nor rewarded the predicted grades I had been promised. Several months after starting college I quit due to tragic family circumstances and poor mental health. I spent increasingly large amounts of time online playing video games, at the time I didn’t realise it, but I was clutching at survival straws and the online world kept me treading water in what felt like an infinite sea of despair.
The following year I started a different course, due to outside influences I switched to start Forensic Science and chemistry, despite being abysmal at chemistry in school. During my second year of this course I fell very sick and was in and out of hospital, keeping up with the work was almost impossible. I had very little choice but to quit, putting me now two years behind the system. This meant that I would not be able to afford to finish college should I return. Thankfully I had some incredible teachers who saw me and how hard I had worked in that first year. Their belief in me meant I was offered a scholarship that allowed me to finish and giving me the opportunity to apply for university.
"I spent increasingly large amounts of time online playing video games, at the time I didn’t realise it, but I was clutching at survival straws and the online world kept me treading water in what felt like an infinite sea of despair."
I get in to a good university and continue down the path of Forensic Science, I do quite well, so well in fact that some of my work is sent off for review at the board as an example of the university’s students. Who could believe it, a troubled kid with less than 50% attendance at school and severe mental health issues was now getting top marks. I couldn’t afford to live on campus and so I commuted over 2 hours a day to attend, it was such a big deal for me to have found such drive. Unfortunately in the shadows, waiting, was an exceptionally abusive relationship. Trauma begets trauma. I’m going to avoid the details for the sake of everyone’s (including my own) sanity, it changed the direction my life was heading and I knew that unless I got out soon, it was going to be game over. I escaped… and then the walls started crumbling and closing in on me. I couldn’t breathe.
I somehow kept going, crawling through each day, with video games being a big part of that. At the start of year two at University one of my new university friends offered me a spare seat to attend a game convention with a couple of others. In a disassociated and anxious space I accepted without too much thought. I was not one for going out much or crowds and would feel completely out of my comfort zone but my disassociation had got to such a stage by this point I was on autopilot and could only think about the opportunity to play Mass Effect and Star Wars: The Old Republic ahead of time.
It was here at the game convention I met my current partner completely unexpectedly. 6 weeks later I quit university and left the country. Pursuing the chance at working with video games, love and safety.
Video Games.
And that risk paid off, for the last 12 years I’ve been working with Video Games. Starting at the proverbial bottom and slowly moving my way up the ladder until I found myself quite near the top, a place I’d never imagined myself to be given everything thus far. Working on some of the biggest titles and IPs in the world it felt like a dream. I was driven to work with video games because they had given me so much during difficult times, a bastion of light on my darkest days, I wanted to be a part of making that for someone else.
“I was driven to work with video games because they had given me so much during difficult times, a bastion of light on my darkest days, I wanted to be a part of making that for someone else.”
Somehow, despite the state of that industry, up until now I’d managed to avoid the layoffs it’s notorious for. However, I found myself falling victim at the worst possible time. The company I was working for went into administration. While I was on maternity leave. I lost my job… Not good… But how I was beginning to feel at work was exactly that; not good. The magic that had once drawn me to games dwindled with each new role and each new project for a multitude of reasons I won’t get into here. Through my recovery (more on that later) I began to rediscover myself and what I enjoyed doing. I still love playing video games but the seeds of doubt on if this is really what I want to do were sewn and this layoff felt like the water they needed to start them growing. Things had to change, and nothing changes if nothing changes.
“While I was on maternity leave. I lost my job… Not good… But how I was beginning to feel at work was exactly that; not good.”
So here I am, taking a leap of faith into building something for myself, for this world and for you. Art with feeling, through my lens, through my eyes and through my needle and thread.
But wait, what led me from video games to embroidering photographs?
Perhaps you’ll want to pause here and grab yourself a nice cuppa tea in that mug you really like, you know the one that makes the tea taste really good, or perhaps you’re already up to the eyeballs in my history and that’s totally okay, I’ll catch you later - Thanks for sharing some of your time here with me, getting to know me a little better.
Tea break
Strong women.
There was one constant thread in the background that helped lead me to this point, and that’s was my late Nan. When I was very young, she used to sit me on her lap and I would knit, or rather, she would knit but using my hands which held the needles, sadly this isn’t how I learned to knit. That would have made for a really lovely story but I was just too young and she stopped knitting not long after this.
My Nan and I were very close. She was a huge of a part of my life growing up, we had that rare kind of grandparent grandchild relationship that not everyone got to experience. I could sit and write for hours about all the amazing memories I have of her. How she stepped in for an absent parent, encouraged, fostered and shared my love of many things. How fiercely sharp and witty, strong willed, independent and smart she was, just to name a few of her many great qualities.
“With the distance now between us I began to learn to knit as a way to show her my love from afar and reconnect on a deeper level by making her gifts.“
Time does what time does, I grew up and moved away, she grew older and then frailer. With the distance now between us I began to learn to knit as a way to show her my love from afar and reconnect on a deeper level by making her gifts. I think in part I was struggling with the guilt of moving away and leaving behind my mum to care for her, something which my mum did with unwavering loyalty, warmth and compassion. She sacrificed almost all of her spare time and energy to ensure that Nan received the care she deserves and never experience loneliness.
One of the first things I made were cup cozies so that she could hold a hot cup without burning her hands. I proudly sent these warmers along with a simple scarf I made for Christmas. On Christmas Day Mum sent me a photo of Nan with her new knitted items. There she sat, smiling with the scarf round her neck and a cup warmer on each hand, she had thought they were fingerless gloves. So then of course I had to learn to make gloves, and it continued from there. Nan became the first recipient of every new thing I knitted, and along the way, I found that knitting started to serve as a form of therapy—something that helped me channel my extreme dissociation into creation. The joy it created for others made me feel less worthless.
After a couple of years of knitting, I decided I wanted to make her a blanket to keep her legs warm, since she was mostly in a wheelchair now. But wow… knitted blankets can take a long time to make and Christmas that year was fast approaching. Intimidated by the prospect, I did a little research and quickly discovered that crochet blankets are faster and easier to make. So I switched my needles for a hook and learned to crochet simple granny squares in order to make her a blanket in time. That Christmas we spent it all together in England and I was able to give her the blanket myself, I’m so glad we did that for it was to be our last Christmas together.
Just over a year later she passed away and it felt as if my whole world had collapsed.
I knitted four hats after she passed, one for me, one for my Mum and one each for the two friends who had helped Mum a lot during this time. And then I put my knitting needles down for several years, I couldn’t bring myself to make anything.
What was the point?
Enter the era of Photography.
A year after she died I decided to buy my first camera, secondhand, using some of the money she had left behind for me. I was still searching for a way to cope with the sense of loss, to come to terms with the fact that I wouldn’t be able to share any more of life’s moments with her, big or small. The camera was to become that, a way to capture those moments in time, for her. Yet it ended up so much more, serving as an outlet for all those difficult feelings I did not know what to do with. My love for photography blossomed.
"The camera was to become that, a way to capture those moments in time, for her. Yet it ended up so much more, serving as an outlet for all those difficult feelings I did not know what to do with”
Looking back at those first few photographs (directly above) I am overcome with a sense of sadness and loneliness. Photographs, to me, serve as a form of time travel. These pictures in particular transport me back to that time and fill my body with how I was feeling. Viewing them all together I am a little taken back to see how much loneliness, emptiness and sorrow they seem to emit from their composition, colour and subject. It’s no wonder I found so much solace in photography as an outlet.
Creativity leashed,
Creativity unleashed.
Several more years had passed and through photography I had begun to heal, heal enough to try picking up my knitting needles once again. Nan certainly wouldn’t have wanted me to stop in the first place, but I needed time.
The details of how I got started with embroidery are a little fuzzy, but I recall back in 2018/2019 seeing a then work colleague of mine post on social media a little Ghibli cross stitch piece he had completed. It really took me by surprise, he was the last person I imagined to do any form of needle craft, I became really drawn to the art form and what could be created. Reaching out to him in admiration, he told me to give it a go, telling me it wasn’t as difficult as it looked. Some time in 2019 I must have picked up a couple of cross stitch and embroidery kits as well as some materials to try, I only remember this because I have photographs of some completed pieces at the time, it was a weird year. I knew at once I was taken with the craft, flow came naturally to me and I loved the finished result.
Then Covid hit and despite Sweden not really doing any form of lockdown, we decided to stay in to protect ourselves until we knew more. This gave me a huge influx of time to focus on crafting and I dived into cross stitch and embroidery alongside photography, knitting and crochet. As time went on, I found cross stitch, although therapeutic, became a bit boring and tedious. Continuously looking back and forth between a pattern and the fabric I knew I wanted more from the craft and embroidery became my focus instead.
In the background though, my mental health continued to have a huge impact on myself and those around me. I had been struggling deeply with (what was later discovered to be) CPTSD. Pursuing therapy is an extremely difficult and long road. You need to be stubborn, almost hatefully so, to get any real treatment and support. I had begun that journey several times throughout my life, each time I relocated progress would stop and I would push it to the back of my head until it became debilitating and needed to find help again. It took several years of back and forth with multiple doctors, specialists and triaging for me to in 2020, finally find myself in the office of someone who has saved my life. Intensive psycho-dynamic trauma therapy has helped me to heal and begin to regain my life again. This is another one of those subjects I could spend hours going into the details on, but that is perhaps for another time if I feel comfortable with sharing more.
“Pursuing therapy is an extremely difficult and long road. You need to be stubborn, almost hatefully so, to get any real treatment and support.“
I continued exploring with embroidery, astonished at the level of flow I could get into, rivaled only by photography, video games and knitting. I tried different materials and techniques before landing on trying it on my own photographs at the end of 2023. Something mentally clicked inside of me, as if unlocking and my creativity flowed. What I was making felt authentically me for the first time, I saw myself staring back at me through my work, work which was only possible to create through an accumulation of my unique lived experiences. My story, the good, the bad and the despair, and so BX Stitchworks came to be.
You’re ace, thanks for reading.
As I mentioned at the start of this post, the aim is to get to know one another to rekindle connection in this disconnected world. If you feel comfortable doing so, let me know a little about you. Even if it’s just who you are and where are you reading this from.
~ B x