Spirit Cloth

quilting leftovers

i will be working on alphabet soup over the weekend. some quilting planned while visiting mom. i put the whole alphabet together so it would form a rectangle. some letters stand on their own and i figured i would embellish them with embroidery or applique. so B was for bee, an embroidered bee. but B could have been for Bear or Butterfly.

the god of the midnight doodle

stitching a doodle by lamplight and thinking about my day.
my friend the doodle god who sits my my bed  sang softly and today i am refreshed.
.....a lovely fabric doodle to give away and a fresh doodle start....i will begin using my lovely new journal, a generous handmade gift from jenn.
this will be my journal now. yes. and when it is full, i will send it back to her filled with midnight doodles. thank you doodle god. thank you jenn.

......if you haven't visited meg yet you might want to.

and i love visiting here lately...

and hooray. this is my 500th post.

doodling reincarnation

....coming back as a flower. i think i should color this one.

quilting games

....i knew that after layering over the old quilt edge, i knew i would want to bring the circles back to the surface, and that is where i found myself  this morning. it turned into a game, trying to guess where they were and cutting through playing peekaboo-where-are-you... it seemed the perfect opportunity to use what if # 14 in a real time application. and it was quite fun turning back the triangles to reveal the color below.

..... the quilt played with me too, the unsewn edges rose off the surface, curling up and doing a little dance waiting their turn to be tacked down and the blacker right-side flipped onto the faded back side which was now the topside and oh how delirious it all became. when suddenly i realized the amazing distortion that was waiting to happen when i sew those petals down, all that black and white swirling and shifting pattern work. a- MAZE-ing.

quilting outside the box

the new edge added from one of the old quilts, seemed a bit dull and i planned to resurface it a bit.
.......i came across an old skirt while unpacking some spring clothes from winter storage. i think it would have seemed a bit too stark had it not shown its back side to me first. so i though i would cover this edge with another layer and then expose the circles somehow... but it turned out to be a circle cut and when i cut the edge off it was curved. i added it anyway, letting it fall as a partial circle , wrong side up, and now there is a new center somewhere outside the original boundary.
......i feel this fell into place on its own and has given me the freedom to accept more of that for this cloth.
one edge didn't reach. i have taken to taping reminders here and there, sticky thought catchers.

quilting facts

before i leave for the holiday weekend, i thought i would backtrack a bit and answer the questions that glennis asked a while back when i was in a fog.  and record where i am (as opposed to worrying about who i am)
the quilt, FEVER, now measures about 64" x 76"- larger than planned now that some of the new edges have been applied. i did a bed ceremony to get a feel for how that works. the quilt has no real right side up and in my head it will have some odd shape ultimately, a jagged sort of overall effect.
my quilts tend to be a bit heavy, especially if i use a lot of linen, but they are also quite thin because i rarely use batting. so i would say they are more like old ceremonial cloths, heavily embellished with a weighty drape.  this one though is quite light because it does have batting in the original center panel. the older quilts are a combo and the new borders will be unbatted and so i think this one will have a wonderful falling quality over the edge of the bed. and a light heart.
.....i have begun applying some clouds that travel through the moon and sun blocks and into another. i love doing this. connecting motifs and working out how things meet and layer.
.....i have some story to develop here during my time off. this project confuses me a lot.  it hasn't developed the constancy i need to work on it steadily.

stitching a mood

sometimes when i am confused i take a more traditional approach to stitching, (yes-i am always stitching) but eventually i take it a bit off course. i used a hoop for this one and i am sewing on a single layer of fabric. i really don't like the hoop. and i really think i will go back to always having a second lightweight foundation. 2 layers have more body. and there seem to be more of a conversation going on between the elements. more stable too, no hoop.
....i will again take a few days off, and i will be back in the "game" after the weekend.

doodle wednesday from the edge

who i am and who i am not is a big question these days. a limitation in itself. probably. i am wondering if it is a boundary worth marking. a self imposed prison perhaps.

quilting a moon break

...an unexpected force has caused a temporary blog break.

working on the edge on the edge

....the best thing about saturdays is that i get up early and do things i can't do on the commuter train. i can spread out on the table and get a feel for where i am and  baste new scraps and make new plans for the day's stitching at leisure. there is something about aligning the edge of the table with the edge of the quilt, the thing just sits there suspended conveniently in front of you, suspended yet supported.

.....i am back on that side that created all the confusion a while back. ( there is a category called fever for this project) the long strip of black with printed leaves is being broken up into blocks to create a rhythmn.  for me it is also a sampler of technique. there are a lot of details here. each section is separated from the next with some sort of free form ethnic style border stripping. in some cases some old  handwoven scraps left over from my weaving days. and i am connecting the elements without a plan, like a research project for me to answer on the fly...how can i do that?  i am trying to make a cloth in some sort of a primitive style. but one that will hold together.