My name is Yarrow, I’m a maker & facilitator living on the East coast of Scotland.
I care about slow crafts and rituals for wellbeing & recovery, research radical textile histories and make sensual things from reclaimed materials.
My practice weaves together intuition, play and wellbeing.
Rituals have always been very important to me. I love living a slow life, enjoying the beauty of queer domesticity and indulging in small pleasures like quilting by hand. In the last few years rehabilitation after an accident, the sudden death of my mum and the deep solitude of lockdowns have guided me to radically deepen my practice and stop wasting fucks on meaningless stuff. Touching something beautiful everyday, building my confidence as a maker and reimagining ordinary things has helped me so much.
Along the way I developed a deep reverence for creative resilience and meaningful integration. I am curious about how our stories live in our bodies and how these stories can lead to liberation. For me there is something about mending and reclaiming materials that illuminates this strange and beautiful process of re-imagination. I love feeling awe and playfulness through improvisation and play and see slow processes as a devotional practice.
Everything I have experienced has taught me about the immense value of pleasure and grounding. Textiles have become a daily reminder that we all deserve to access these moments of connection and joy.
My background
I learned to sew from my mum and consider myself a community taught artist and maker, having taken classes with wonderful folks like Heidi Parkes, Christi Johnson, Zak Foster, Sherry Lynn Wood, Julius Arthur, Melissa Word, Willemien de Villiers, Donna Watson and Maura Ambrose.
I have an MA in creative media, a postgraduate certificate in history, a diploma of higher education in culture & heritage, a level 3 award in education and training and an open BA combining creative writing, mythology & philosophy. Currently I am continuing my studies in culture & heritage at the University of the Highlands and Islands with a focus on needle skills as ancestral practices and queer quiltmaking. I’ve also completed several bodywork, movement & celebrancy training programs and have studied for a professional certificate in end of life care with the University of Vermont.
What guides my practice
I’ve worked online for almost my whole adult life – after starting a blog as a teenager I fell into the world of e-commerce start ups and eventually founded my own web design studio. I love how the internet can connect us, but once I hit my mid thirties my longing to work with my hands started to grow.
Long days looking at screens made me want to enjoy the meditative process of carving print blocks, to touch linens and to make things that people would receive in the mail instead of their inboxes.
I also had a sense that I wanted my work to be more sustainable in a tangible way, which is where textile waste and reclaimed materials came in. Watching the documentary The True Cost opened my eyes to how harmful fast fashion is and how our relationship to textiles urgently calls for repair, decolonisation and radical reimagination. There is something about turning materials we already have in excess into something new like a quilt that makes a lot of sense to me. I believe that to survive as a species we’ll have to learn to see beauty in the mess we created and make the practice of reuse into a well loved habit.
All of this really came together after I slipped on black ice on new year’s eve 2020. The injury I sustained from this accident means that my mobility is limited and I’m now living a much slower and more peaceful life. Being able to enjoy mending by hand, queer domesticity and simple pleasures helped me to adapt to my changed body and to see my role in the world in a new light.
I’m no longer here to be a part of the rat race. I am here to take my time and inspire others to do the same by making beautiful things that can remind you of what really matters.
Past projects
2024 – 2025 Pen Pals – a local peer support group offering creative workshops, socials and walks with funding from the Fife mental health trust (co-organiser)
2020 – 2023 Weekly and bi-weekly low cost creative space sessions on Zoom that offered gentle accountability, inspiration and company, especially through lockdowns (facilitator)
2021 – Mending Together, a six week live online group exploring textiles and mending practices (facilitator)
2018 – 2020 Monthly Magic – a low cost membership that explored embodiment, ritual and creativity (facilitator)
2014 – Five things about my gender – a collaborative portrait project that explored queer identities as part of my MA in creative media at the University of Brighton (facilitator)
2013 – 2014 Queer in Brighton, a collaborative community project exploring identity through photography and writing, run by Anthony Luvera and funded by Queer Heritage South (participant)
My writing has been published in Glitterwolf Magazine, Sinister Wisdom journal, Skin to Skin, Queer Episodes and Tour Literary magazine.