This collection started in a season we'd just been evicted from our old workspace. A friend graciously offered to share hers with us, and I was grateful, genuinely, but underneath the gratitude I was also a little heartbroken. Losing that space stung more than I let on, and it wasn't the only thing I was quietly grieving that season.
In the middle of all that, I wanted to work with patchwork again, but do it differently from how I'd seen it done before. I sat down with one of our tailors and we started on a sample.
The first one came together, and it was fine. But I knew almost immediately that we weren't there yet. Something about it was still reaching for an idea instead of holding one.
So we started a second sample. Before we'd even added the finishing details, I already knew: this was it. This was our interpretation of patchwork, something that hadn't existed until that tailor and I sat with the fabric long enough to find it.
Looking back, I don't think it's a coincidence that the piece became this in a season I was breaking in other ways too, grieving a space, grieving a few things I hadn't fully named yet, and still being met with a grace I hadn't asked for. Patchwork is pieces cut apart and joined back together into something whole. It felt like the right technique for what that season actually was.
"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Psalm 147:3
That verse stayed with me through the whole collection, along with a song I kept returning to while building it: Tasha Cobbs' "Gracefully Broken," which gave the collection its name.
God will break you to position
He will break you to promote you
And break you to put you in your right place
But when He breaks you, He doesn't hurt you
When He breaks you, He doesn't destroy you
He does it with grace Tasha Cobbs, "Gracefully Broken"
Breaking, sometimes, is God's way of aligning us with our purpose. Not to harm us. To heal, rebuild, and elevate us into it.