in collaboration with TextielLab, the TextielMuseum‘s professional workshop

Happy Everything Tablecloth is a large tablecloth assembled from curtains, pillowcases, and hand-embroidered table linens collected from secondhand stores. The embroidered vase shapes that structure the surface are based on the shapes of vases found in a secondhand store, objects once given as gifts or kept as decoration that later lost their place in someone’s home. When lying flat, the machine-embroidered forms resemble geometric flowers. When pulled upward into three-dimensional vase shapes, layers of earlier hand-embroidered textiles appear beneath the surface. Drawing on inscriptions from the vases, small stitched phrases such as “happy everything,” “love,” and “forever 18” appear along the edges, reflecting both kitsch and universal aspirations. The tablecloth situates the table as a central site of care, repetition, and celebration, making visible both the labor embedded in domestic objects and the subjective value assigned to them.