dila demircan özer

playing chess

Patchwork, 10 x 10 m, mixed leftover fabric and towels

Vienna, 2022

Sewing sounds doing something crafty but it’s a careful blend of math, creativity, and emotion. I’ve learned it from my mother, our works are interwoven with invisible threads and fabrics.

When I began sewing this 10x10 meter blanket made of towels the connections felt clear at first. Each piece seemed to belong next to the other. But as more layers came together, the process grew complex. It became like a chessboard, requiring strategy, visualization, and emotional navigation. The bigger the fabric grew, the more it carried: not just weight, but history, contradiction, and feeling. So does the life.

What makes a blanket powerful is not only how it’s made, but what it creates. It becomes a social and emotional surface. You can lie under it with someone, sit on it during a picnic, or wrap it around yourself in solitude. Its folds carry small rituals of care, warmth, and belonging.

In that sense, a blanket is more than a textile, it’s a soft architecture of connection. It transforms space by softening it, inviting comfort, stillness, and presence. It gives form to something invisible: the need to feel held, to belong, to remember. Like life, it is imperfect, layered, and stitched together with care.