Wired - Bernina International Pictogram Project

My finished pictogram piece

“WIRED”

Autism Awareness – Wired differently but just as loveable

The first pieces of fabric I played around with

Many parents in the autism community have to come up with ways of explaining to their autistic children how they are different to their peers, they liken it to the difference between a MAC and a PC. Both are computers, both perform the same functions but they think & work differently. This analogy is easy for today’s technology loving children to understand. A more basic reference is saying we are all “wired differently”.

Initially I wanted to make a robot, just a fun but meaningless robot of some description, robots are cool! I got the colour felt I love. A beautiful deep blue. I had recently purchased a piece of yellow leather, I like the smell, soft texture and the shade of yellow. The yellow seemed to stand out great on the blue and I liked the different textures so I knew my robot was going to be yellow leather.

Starting to create my design

As I played with all my favourite textured and hand painted, hand dyed random bits of fabric, velvet, leather, tulle, organza etc, I narrowed my selection down to a few elements I wanted to include. As my quilting art and my son are the most prominent features in my life my piece began to naturally evolve around my son. He is autistic and 4 months ago he turned 4. Since then he has been making big progress, big efforts to talk and communicate, a new interest in books, playing skills, sharing and caring, just doing so well that it’s been really wonderful for him and our family. The robot became 2 robots, Mother and Son and I was reminded of the term “wired differently” commonly used to describe someone with autism. I was always wanting to show the inner workings of my robot so that tied in well.

My husband asked me “what’s the things in the background?!” Duh, clearly it’s an urban landscape with buildings and multi-faceted dodecahedron sculptures! People are multi-faceted, it makes perfect sense to me that they should be there. Oh and yes I know my figure is a man and I made it a Mum but that doesn’t bother me, this is just a lady who prefers pants than skirts!