When the Rains Fell, We Held

A stitched tribute to those affected by Crising, Dante, and Emong

In the last two weeks of July 2025, three typhoons — Crising, Dante, and Emong — battered Northern Luzon, bringing floods, broken roads, and grief too heavy to measure. From those sleepless nights of storm and worry, this work emerged — stitched with thoughts of Baguio and the Cordilleras, and with hope that beauty still blooms after the rains.

“When the Rains Fell, We Held” is a small tribute stitched in sorrow, love, and resilience.

The base of this piece was pieced together from remnants of ordinary life — a well-worn pillowcase, a lady’s blouse, the tiny skirt of a child, and a Japanese tea towel once folded neatly in someone’s kitchen. Some of these were scraps I had saved from Tengba, my very first textile art. Each fragment held something — softness, wear, memory. In the quilt, they became a shared body: patched, bruised, enduring.

In the center, a button — once barely hanging onto that old pillowcase — now takes its place as the focal point, holding firm. I left it just as I found it: fragile, but hanging on. It reminds me of the eye of the storm — that calm, eerie stillness inside the chaos. That small point of quiet we cling to, when the world rushes wildly around us.

The stitched symbols tell a layered story:

Three circles mark the passage of the three typhoons, each one turning over the land in its own time.

Vertical running stitches fall like rain — unending, weighty, washing everything in sorrow.

Behind the rain, faint dandelions — the kind children might’ve wished on — stand bent or erased, never given the chance to be enjoyed.

The ones still visible, untouched by thread, are my quiet symbols of hope and resilience.

A brown mountain amidst green ones representing those eroded.

Cross stitches appear like scattered tombstones — small marks of lives lost.

Yet from beneath all this, flowers bloom. Bright, defiant. Symbols of color and life that push through the wreckage.

The yellow and orange details, stitched at the heart, are warmth stitched into sorrow — survival sewn into cloth.

This work was done entirely by hand, using methods inspired by sashiko, kantha, and boro — slow, deliberate, meditative techniques that reflect the way we hold ourselves and one another together, even when frayed at the edges.

It is both prayer and protest — an insistence that we remember, and that we rise.

We hold — in storm, in stitching, in each other.

This piece was exhibited in Agosto Ko Ang Sining, a showcase of debut works by the Pasakalye Group of Artists’ new associate members, held from August 4 to 28, 2025 at SM Baguio lower basement. It was a truly cozy and memorable experience for me and my fellow artists, thoughtfully curated by Prince Salazar Rabang, whose sensitive arrangement highlighted the spirit of each piece.

On the day of the egress, when my daughters and I went to SM to pull out my artwork, something unexpected and deeply moving happened—someone who had seen the piece felt a connection and chose to bring it home. I cannot express the happiness and gratitude I felt in that moment. Though I was not able to meet the buyer, I carry the hope that one day our paths will cross, and I may ask her what it was in the work that spoke to her heart.