Spirit Cloth

stretching color

I love how this plant offers so many variations of the same color during its summer cycle.

And I love how Heike packages here natural dye packs, just a perfect range of soft change. A real treat.

in between colors

...one of a few adventures into colorlessness. found, stitched and yet undyed. gotta go somewhere, see ya later...

just talking to myself

This is just a little test for my new teaching format which has begun to come together... The video itself is not part of the series, but just an in process chat that the Man used as a sound test while I was working on my beast class giveaway, which is, by now, already complete and on its way to a new home.

Video can be so tricky, testing, always testing. The bell you hear ring towards the end is my blackberry. I forgot to turn it off.  

I liked the outline idea so much I figured I would share it, since it is recorded, and I have indeed begun to prepare some of that colorless patchwork mentioned, to continue with.

The heat has returned, there is a a funeral to go to...and I hear there is a hurricane headed this way. Expect a few interruptions here. Maybe. It's ok, I have a lot of little squares to sew together and they fit in my pocket.

regenerating

And so  even though I have a little more of this fabric in the bin, it was this the tiniest leftover from something else, just a little piece, still so identifiable, a scrap of cloth  that fell  onto this piece in its early stages, fraying a bit more as I worked and glued it all down with stitch. And as i came upon it this morning, I looked at it with some sadness, sorry to see it disappearing, wondering how to use it here. And then almost in the same moment, joy!, with a bit of consideration, poof!, it was reborn into a livelier version of itself.  I will take some extra gentle time to nurture this.  This indeed is a magic feather. Isn't this what we do? How we continue? There is always some small piece to hold onto. Be careful what you consider trash. What if things die only if we let them?

Today i like this and this.

as the dust settles

The light is changing. A few steps into in between on this Sunday. Dust settling could be the title for this one. But it is not settled yet. So who knows? I find I am starting to discard the concept of direction.

Maybe redirection is on my mind. And how that might be ever present. Unless you consider the moment. Which may not exist beyond just its consideration. 

I have no frame of reference today. my mind is dust. The unsettled kind. 

This cloth is so light, I keep stitching to give it substance. It feels like mending the holes between moments. Each one redefining the shape of things. This is giving new meaning to spaced out. Today, a square is made of dust.

the softening of the stones

I recently completed the spirit of endurance.... with a thought of stone and hardness and softness. And the story here included the line..."to understand softness is to see through the edge of things". And so i am caught in that thought. 

Just completing my giveaway for the beast class, the littlest goat.

The one with the wide eyes and the magic horns. Saddled up for a small journey. And he has become the master of sure-footedness in the process. And the magic dots keep evolving... stones again but softer. Silk velvet stones. How confusing is that? There is an obvious lesson here, but you have to touch them first. 

I am posting twice today because I will not be posting tomorrow. Someone I like very much has passed away and I want to take some time to consider that.

playing with gaps

The moon tide is always prompts a trip to the shore...strange storms and a seasonal change has sculpted the sand this year and when the tide comes in  it plays tricks with the uneven landscape.

We played some games with the incoming tide for a while.

Then I came home to day 3 of mending.  Time to shut down my personal form of air conditioning and get ready for fall.

I need to refine these  bit...actually thinking of dipping them in indigo once again. yes, I am going to try some indigo dyeing just once. Just to appreciate the process. 

The side is being patched with an old shirt placket , seam to seam.  i like to honor the seam and keep the garment's design intact. 

...with a bit of flannel as backing patches i will be ready for the first chill. i love my new knee keepers. And now I think an afternoon of stacking wood is in order.

things that make sense

I will be off to mom's tomorrow . Some food shopping and few chores. And I will be finishing up a bit of overdue mending. I worked on one project today using my cloth to cloth technique. I am sure these will hold together. For a long time. I have added extra lining to make the patching even more secure. It works really well and I am sure I will never have to buy any clothes again.

Ok, not so pretty, but they will do. Wait till you see the shirt. And the robe. I want to use the word rescue or restore here. Not refashion, let's leave the fashion out of it.

And speaking of mending and those simple kinds of satisfying things, you might visit here and join the merry band of cloth elves. Some things just make sense.

ode to a parsley worm

Oh little chubby caterpillar, how i love thee! Let me count the ways...

I love you because you are so quiet and how you appear out of nowhere,  just like magic. Poof.

I love that you have not shown your mean orange horns, (is that your head?) but have let me hold you without shrinking away.

I love your amazing color and pattern that seems almost unnatural.

I love that there is just one of you and when I held you close, I was sure I  heard you whisper " I promise not eat too much, there is enough to go around".

I really love that when I returned you to the garden and visited the next morning, you kept your word.

And I do love the second promise I know you will keep. I am waiting for the butterfly.

I made a little cloth in your honor. ...in honor of a little promise.

what if...

So what if What If is just remodeled a bit?  As some of you might have noticed, there has been a password on the What If blog for a while. Some of you have inquired as to what is going on with that.  I have been redesigning it a bit to include some video.  My plan is also to host the Cloth Whispering series from there... because it belongs there I think.  I am actually starting the blog over again to make it more of a teaching tool and  to make it more organized and to integrate it with this Spirit Cloth blog.  So to make a long story short, I am changing things a bit, including my shop situation ( more on that soon)  and access to What if will be restored on September 1st if all goes well.

Here I suppose I was asking what if circles could be square? And that works here. A nine patch of silk dots, mostly tiny remains of Dolce ribbon stitched to a fabulous gifted and altered Fortuny print fragment from Phyllis. These are the smallest dots yet, 1/2", done in peekaboo applique which I will be demonstrating over at What If soon. A little bit of test Whispering. Thank you all for your patience with my never ending seasons....