Spirit Cloth

seeing

i have been focused on eyes lately (ha! that sounds so funny) and i caught sight of this eye in my work table this morning.  it is marred from all the pinning and cutting but it is still there, beautiful, looking back at me as always. it made me think of mom, how her eyes have slowly become clouded with cataracts, but how just the other day (thanksgiving it was) she looked me right in the eye and said, "you know, the best thing about getting older is that you can finally see clearly, see things for what they are..."

...so i am still thinking about eyes, about seeing, about the evolution of vision. and that it might be a different kind of evolution. a kind that can happen within a lifetime. 

i have in my head that it is related to storytelling, this vision thing. like making out patterns in the darkness as your eyes adjust to your surroundings. it is about seeing and also being seen. there are many new symbols in this one. i am paying more attention to that lately. the personal aspect of representation. i will finish this one today. it is a small cloth but it is a keeper of many eyes.

the spirit of technology

quilting a toss

i love the day after a storm... usually blindingly sunny and little pieces of everything...(dots?)...are scattered about.  yesterday, in the wind,  the leaves were flying and i thought of them as tree feathers. (i was also noticing the small space left between the back stitches has the look of couching)

and so that feather showed up again like a fallen leaf and as a reminder that is a somehow a permanent symbol now. maybe even a signature. (i embroidered tossed some red dots into the mended edging to encourage a conversation with that woven dotted fabric)

this piece is really about tossing. pieces of different times and places all mixed up and thrown around. seemingly out of place... and seeing the beauty of that. i have often been told i am all over the place (not as a compliment). i might have even caught myself pressuring my own son with that phrase. but today the toss seems a good thing. and i bite my tongue. that early chill may just be the first few stitches in natures blanket of change. just a new pattern. maybe things need to be rearranged to refresh usefulness.

now i will go collect all the storm' s debris. it is a good day to gather kindling.

quilting without an edge

it is really windy today. so i picked up an early snow... it has that blustery mood. because of the haphazard way i piece things together and then stitch as the mood fills me...i forget and i often end up with an odd shaped cloth. i placed this one on a rectangular backing torn slightly larger to give me some straight edges for reference. sometimes i just leave the irregular cloth's edges exposed and let the straight lines of the backing imply completeness.

...but this time i am patching outward, covering the backing and overlapping the main portion to create a the final picture frame.  i will just quilt out to the edges with out a binding. i like that look. just makes it look like one piece of layered cloth. like it was a page torn from a storybook.

wind lightens my heart.

storytelling

the moon, which is almost full, is amazing tonight. from my window it looks pretty much like this. i have been using my time lately to create some space to think.  i was thinking about blogging.  what it is. what it can be. what it often isn't.  since it is a sort of diary, it has great potential to reveal.  it can tell a story.  and a story can be many things.  it can be a lie (or worse, a trick) or it can be the truth... the truth as defined as what really happened as you see and feel it.  with no regard to popularity (a hard thing to define).

i found this leaf today and it seemed as i held it that it contained both life and death.  the truth is your best effort to share.  that is all it can be.  your story.  if it is real, that makes you a teacher no matter what it is.  the way i see it, the difference between storytellers is honesty and nothing else.

i feel the same way about art.