Spirit Cloth

quilting a documentary

the small journey series has become a learning curve for me. tiny stories of travelers and life experience. moments cropped from a larger picture of understanding. this one is coming to a close in some ways. but to keep the idea of a single chapter in an ongoing epic i have chosen to leave one side open ended, this time a trail of what it is made of.
.....i am mixing added edge decoration along with evidence of the backing and layers and thread that would ordinarily be hidden from view by finishing. exposing the facts of the process which i think will add to the symbolism of this moment in time. finished but just begun. filled with infinite possibility.

quilting and changing color

.....a little garden friend reminds me that change is often only on the surface. i suppose how ever tumultuous things seem, some underlying elements can always be considered constant. this is quite comforting and today i am focusing on blending in, blending in to what is around me whatever that may be.
.....a little stitching focused on color change. playing with discharge, yarn dyed patterns and variegated stitching thread. an experiment in camouflage. this is quite comforting also.

contemplating change

.....it is really raining today. rainy days are good for stitching and thinking.

slowly watching how the stitching changes the surface of a piece. thinking how nice it is to stitch through silk.

thinking how change is a recurrent theme in my work. how comfortable i am with that. wondering why i am so uncomfortable with change in my real life.

rainy days are good for being alone with uninterrupted mood swings. 

planning a crazy new order

....i woke up this morning in better spirits yet confusion seems to hang over me like i constant cloud. it has to do with many changes looming on the horizon. not necessarily bad things, just things that require rearranging and refocusing and re-viewing.  things in the back of my mind seem to have shifted position. i have layers of things that are hard to see. maybe i need 3D glasses.(remember those?)
.....i continue to work on the shadow idea. i often layer as a process but now i am experimenting with partial view and silhouette. the september TIF, (the list as a WIP) which i consider finished for the challenge....has morphed into the second in the transition series.
the new discharge using that tree motif is done on hand dyed linen gauze. the same gauze that i used to display and reveal some of the moons at the beginning,
the spiral cutouts placed under the gauze allow some change to the movement..... what i imagine might happen if a strange wind blew in and transformed the dancing of the branches into a more organized motion.

some changes i am planning include leaving flickr on some level, setting up my categories by project, and posting a bit less often for now. i think these will be the first of many in my own transition series.

and a new plan for giving....i have joined tonya in  this effort. how about you?

(this project is continued here)

what if wednesday : wasted

today's  doodle illustrates the the answer to the question i failed to ask last night (beforehand)...." what if i drink too much wine?"

yesterday was not a good day. i felt confused and overwhelmed by conflicting goals. wine did not help much. i have switched to carrot juice.

quilting priorities

this morning there was a chill in the air. and i was reminded that fall is a time to focus energy on useful things. with all this list making it was obvious that lists lead to prioritizing.
fever is a gift. it is a quilt. it is meant to give shelter and warmth. and winter is coming. final quilting has commenced. thread ends are being used. it will be covered in stitches. it is time to make it useful. this is quilting for real.

as the world turns

the dogwood is turning.
grapes are hanging on the vine like blue moons.(fabulous photo by jeff aka walter).

things are coming apart. something crazy is coming together...as the world turns.

putting things in order

....i will be off and away from home for a while, visiting mom, getting some things done. and since i am trying to get organized, i am bringing the ever growing thread/scrap nest with me, trying to make use of all those thread ends. here is the first list of what was in there. a list of leftovers.

( TIF September study)

harvesting thoughts

.....so that harvest moon was impressive this time around, and i got to thinking of moons and how they are a series. which somehow got me to thinking about things and how we are always trying to put them in order. probably because it is less confusing.
of course then i thought about lists because of sharon's challenge. because thoughts are always jumbled up in my head and then they just sort of sort themselves out.

while asking myself what is a list i considered it to be:

a series, a kind of math, an alignment of things, a path or direction, a diagram of chaos,  a way to remember. a form of communication that makes things easier to share.

sometimes lists are vertical or they can be horizontal like a timeline or round like a clock. i began to imagine a list as something more dimensional, something layered, like shifted slices of time. so a Work In Progess is like a list. a list of steps and temporary points of view, a form of shape shifting transformation that as a whole has a crazy order. i am hoping to harvest that crazy order here. a small journey, yet a larger one if you take it further.

working with shadows

...well the tree party in the moonlight has been caught in my dreams. after some what-iffing with bleach discharge and indigo linen, this is my first success with creating the tree sketch in cloth. the ghost effect is enhanced by the uneven yet clean edges and has really inspired me to use this as a background for yet another in the small journey series. but like a shadow, it has disappeared, at least for the moment. for i awoke this morning without remembering where i put it. so it waits under a pile of fabric somewhere to be rediscovered as part of a future story. i am really forgetting things lately. i have to learn to work around it. to make it part of my plan. otherwise i will become very pissed off...like all the time. arrrgh. 

AND before i forget.....thanks to karen for featuring my stitching in her guest post over here at sweet figments...and thanks to stitch spectacular for reviewing my work yesterday. and thank you all for your blog awards and reviews. there are just too many to keep up with.