Spirit Cloth

halloween story

somewhere in the 1980s. my son. me. in halloween drag. i am not as sociable these days....i turn off all the lights and pretend i'm not home.

but then again it is hard not to get into the spirit of the thing. Trick or Treat...

quilting with words

often i add words to my cloths. looking back at the lion quilt which i am planning to re-document here on the blog, each lion had a story and the words were all stitched on the surface after the quilt was quilted, a technique i use, grabbing only the top layer, not effecting the back at all. (shown here: the snow lion of the eastern highlands where fear is forever frozen, master of timing, bringer of joy and painter of vibrant energy. in case you were wondering.)

.....so i am stitching  away on FEVER,  on the red lion, and i think...of course...words... after all nemo (my other brother, bringer of treasures from elsewhere) is a writer and poet...this will be the element that brings it together. but this time i will use the words like quilting.. let them go all the way to the far side (elsewhere so to speak).

...and since the quilt has a lot of rough terrain, sometimes the stitches get lost inside and what shows up on the back will not only be in reverse but will be fragmented as well. i like the delirious jumble that has already started to form. yes i do. 

what if wednesday- lining things up

...it has occurred to me that it is difficult to get all my thoughts in useful order sometimes. when the chill comes in i often sit and page through old journals. and i think to myself, oh, that was a good idea. and i wonder about all these journals. and again i question whether the context of my thoughts has been lost over time. and so today i have asked myself  what if i don't just recycle... but refresh my thoughts?
i am looking back and noticing my habit of repeating things and my constant doodling of borders like this. and this. i have several ideas about that today. i am thinking about borders as edges. i am thinking about borders as samplers. i am thinking about borders as meeting points especially where i meet my own thoughts from long ago. now i am considering reworking all my old scribbles into fresh doodles. re-journaling. or something like that. and of course converting that to stitch. what if this what if becomes a series? PS.i am not posting to flickr anymore. at least not for now.

quilting purpose

slow cloth is something that grows with time. it contains so much story and so many thoughts. you could even say it contains an evolution of a sort. i learn and grow a lot in the process. and so when i get to the quilting part, a term i use very loosely... it is the time i take to travel slowly over every inch of the surface. front and back. it is the time i take to touch and feel the weight of the cloth and admire how each piece of the puzzle fits. and if the project is slow enough it is the time i take to witness the change in its surface, and prepare it for yet another journey. it is the time i take  to get up really close and listen to myself whispering quilt tales yet untold.  this is the purpose of quilting. for me it is a kind of ceremony, and it is the best time of all. i like to think of these final stitches as the keepers of the spirit of the cloth.
today i am adding details to the red lion with pen and thread before quilting the surface securely. i am remembering my whatiffing and loving the purpose it has found.

quilting the morning after

..... well it all seemed like a dream. monday this morning before work everything in the studio was calm and back to normal.
  .....until the the moment it came back on me...
 
there are new edges everywhere...many confused glances on that commuter train this morning.

studio sunday 3

last weekend, while visiting mom and doing a few fall chores my brother removed  the now abandoned nest from the birdhouse (and took another great photo).  what a surprise i thought, not just the making of a home from scrap but how the boundary helped define its beauty so.
 i got to thinking about making things and how we gather bits and pieces from the chaos around us. how little is actually within our reach and how we work within the challenge of our own limitations...how the ultimate shape of all that process defines us.
there was a pile of scraps on the studio floor this morning. i was stressing to get organized all week. and so....realizing the pretense of such control, i gave in and simply made it into a nest.

... believe me... making the nest was easier than getting this picture. but i needed to catch that thought. i rested there for a while dreaming and wondering what shape my process will ultimately reveal.

weaving a story

......so paula noted that textile in the background of my last post and no i did not weave that. i picked it up on my first trip to turkey. it is cushion cover and i bought it for several reasons. it was dirt cheap... and i really liked the construction which is wool brocade on cotton.
i really liked the back which is undyed and very unevenly handspun wool.
and most of all i like it now because i thought it was vegetable dyed until i got it home and looked inside. amazingly it had become so worn and faded that it fooled me completely. "maturity" as shula so elegantly put it a few posts ago.... sure fixes a lot of ugly shit. remember that.
so no, i didn't weave it, my rug weaving has been limited to this recycled cat carpet which has been repurposed as a chair rug in my studio.  i have many weaving adventures , many still unrecorded.

quilting a relapse

it is ironic that this year's slow cloth project started with a real fever and now that i am finishing it up i am sick again...feeling better today but  sewing the ragged edge has me wrapped in fiery thought.
i went into a tearing frenzy this morning, i need more ragged edges. i have decided that they will burn on both sides.
....and of course whenever i am on an edge traveling companions appear. and speaking of appearances, i am finishing but i have a long way to go with this. 2 months or so of heated stitching.
........and all the while the coma is forming. a direct progression from fever. COMA is the new quilt.

quilting fever and a warm chair

.....i am not feeling well today. i am keeping myself warm...sitting under the quilt while working on it. on a whim i decided to apply some ragged hand dye to add more fire to fever's edge.
many many quilting stitches have sealed in the warmth over the last weeks. after the edge is complete i will turn it over and work with the back a bit. i haven't focused on it at all. i saved it for a surprise.
.....it is quite cold outside and the season's first fire has enticed HER to cross the edge of trust. and i have a warm sewing chair.
she closed her eyes right after this photo.

fabrics are people too

today i took the time to think about the lives of fabrics. they age in the most extraordinary ways.
.....i noticed some old antique silk scraps that have light faded and become ever more beautiful. i admire how they persist.