Stitching the Unmade Body: My Frankenstein-Inspired Embroidery & the Art of Reassembly

Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein has reignited a conversation that has always lived quietly in my work: what does it mean to stitch a body back together? What does it mean to rebuild the self from scraps—memory, trauma, tenderness, and the stories we inherit?

Frankenstein’s creature is not simply a monster; he is a being assembled from the remnants of others. And in many ways, so are the women in the historic photographs I embroider.

The stitched heart, the exposed arteries, the layered threads—they all echo the same truth Mary Shelley wrote two centuries ago:
we are made, unmade, and remade.

The Body as Patchwork: Why Frankenstein Speaks to Textile Artists

Textile art has always understood what Frankenstein symbolizes. A needle is a tool of repair, resilience, and resurrection. When I embroider a heart or lay red thread across a historic image, I’m engaging in the same act the doctor does—though with care and reverence rather than violence.

This piece, with the young woman whose stern face contrasts the rawness of the embroidered heart spilling down her torso, feels like a quiet homage to Frankenstein’s creature. Her ribs and arteries appear to burst through the photograph like a truth long suppressed.
She is stitched open, not to terrify—but to reveal.

Embroidery becomes a way to expose what history tried to conceal.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein: A New Lens on the Stitched Body

Del Toro is known for portraying monsters with profound humanity—creatures who reflect our wounds more than our fears. His interpretation of Frankenstein promises to explore grief, longing, and identity through a compassionate lens.

In my own work, I try to do the same.

The embroidered vessels, the dangling threads, the ruptured chest—these are not gore; they’re metaphors for interiority. For the lived experiences that never made it into the archives. For the women whose emotional realities were considered irrelevant.

Del Toro’s creature asks, “What am I?”
My stitched women ask, “What was done to me—and how do I reclaim it?”

Both questions come from the same place: a longing to be seen as whole despite being pieced together.

Embroidering the Heart as Act of Reanimation

In Frankenstein, the heart is implied—a source of animation and anguish.
But in my textile art, the heart becomes literal, physical, screaming in color.

The red threads act as veins, yes, but also as storylines.
The glimmering beads become fragments of memory embedded in tissue.
The stitched knots resemble scars—proof of healing and survival.

To embroider a heart onto an old photograph is to reanimate it. To breathe life into someone long gone. To give her the interior world history never wrote down.

Mary Shelley imagined a creature who was assembled from death.
I use embroidery to assemble women back into life.

Why Frankenstein Belongs in the Conversation About Women’s Embroidery

Though often overlooked, Frankenstein is, at its core, a story written by a teenage girl confronting creation, responsibility, and the violent expectations placed on bodies—especially those that are othered or controlled.

My embroidery follows that lineage.

I stitch because stitching is power.
Because red thread refuses silence.
Because every embroidered artery is a way of saying:

“This woman lived. This woman felt. This woman had a heart.”

Frankenstein’s monster is feared because he shows the rawness of what humans hide.
So do my embroidered figures.

And in both stories, the stitched body becomes a revolt.