My Journey through Cancer

Lucia Duffin creates embroidered art inspired by historic and personal events. She recently earned a Masters in Textiles and Surface Design from Birmingham City University.

This piece, entitled My Journey through Cancer, was created as a therapeutic process to express the emotions and physical experience from her diagnosis in 2023 through to recovery, while preparing for a teaching qualification.

The energy and determination shine through, demonstrating that beauty can still be found in the darkest of places. The piece aims to inspire others experiencing cancer to find hope and strength.

It has been created using machine embroidery taking over 250 hours to embroider alone, followed by the beading and construction of the dress. It’s been an emotional journey creating the dress as it brings back memories and feelings about each stage of treatment and the journey through cancer. Cancer is an extremely hard journey to travel and not one to be taken lightly.

The journey has been hard and coming through the other side is only really the start of your journey but creating this dress and being able to put thoughts onto the dress has been a therapeutic way of dealing with going through the treatment and coming to terms with that your body has through. After talking to others who have gone through a cancer journey, the artist hopes more will be able to relate to the emotions and feelings embroidered on the dress.

The energy and determination shine through, demonstrating that beauty can still be found in the darkest of places.