132 months

132 baby-wipes, dip dyed with beetroot and raspberry tea, hand-pleated with the smocking needles remaining in the piece.

Each baby-wipe signifies a month of mothering; they have been individually dipped into a mixture of waste raspberry tea and beetroot peelings. The beetroot peeling are from borscht soup, which my grandmother made. The weight of expectations of what is good mothering stems from my grandmother and mother; the unwritten rules of what makes a good mother has been taught to me from birth. The beetroot is mixed with the waste raspberry tea-bags my children like to drink. Their saliva is mixed into the dye and they too are embedded in this piece. Their expectations of me also are weighty but also have a fragrant beauty. The beetroot/raspberry dye is a fugitive dye - it changes over time; like mothering, it it not static thing but shifts and adapts to the environment around it.

The body of the piece weighs and stretches at the pin which holds it together. The pin is me.

This piece is really about hidden labour, the lengthy process of making the piece is integral to the piece itself - the boiling of the dyes, the dipping, the drying and the pleating of the wipes mimics the repetitive nature of housekeeping. The endless moving of pile of clothes, folding and sorting fabrics which makes up much of my day.