Spirit Cloth

Stitching

 

Quilting (for me) is a needle chant. 

One stitch at a time is how I like it.

Needle in

Needle out

Making do

 

I have heard my posts have not been arriving by email lately. To those subscribed, well, oh well. It's free and it's all I got.

Today I have begun quilting an older piece. I was calling it Half Woven in Space.

That still seems OK. I have decided to make this into a larger piece.

Because I dreamed of it.

A blanket. A quilt.

It is already 25" square.  About.

Right now it is pinned to the Magic Cloth. 

Where it seems to give me the impression of a window.

To another dimension.

 

I want to talk about this cloth more. Talk about quilting.  Tomorrow.  I will quietly sit with it today.

Without talking.

 

Something like a curtain

There is a bunch of thin cloth hanging between the drafty kitchen and the room we heat. The kitchen is between the studio and that warm room.  I replaced the heavier one because I just couldn't stand not to have some light coming through. It helps to hold the heat. With an occasional cool breeze.

Soul-o loves it.  He chases shadows and runs back and forth between the sections, especially at night when the firelight makes it seem like a dense fog in the wind.

March is a bit like a curtain between seasons.  The kind you cannot pull back to see more clearly.  More like a fog that lifts on it's own accord.  And it's been hanging there. 

I placed a square of very thin cloth (I used to test the indigo vat) over the patchwork from last week.  I like what it did to the grid.  It erased the lines.  Made a window.  But didn't destroy the sense of order.  The thought. In my mind I can see through it. 

to Hold and be Held

Basket Sense

Making sense of self. I continue to let the image form. I learn from image. Form.

It is sort of three things. For me.

Basket.

A sense of  self.  A sense of what self might hold. A sense of what might hold self.   Sense is personal.  No one else needs to understand. Until you understand, then you might share.

It is snowing. Cold. Again. The studio, the quiet room closed. Not because there is no wood. Just because I am tired of keeping so many fires burning. And I don't need to. 

This morning, the curve of the path out seems the rim of a bigger basket. Bigger than my sense of anything yet considered.

Nice and Old - part 2

Old shoes...

And sky light.

Nice and Old

A beautiful  cloth from Indonesia. 

Very striking with the combination of warp ikat and discontinuous supplementary weft  patterning.

This textile , like a few I have here combines both natural and synthetic dyes.  The natural colors have faded greatly in contrast. And changed the look of the cloth over time.

Handwoven. With an interesting personal asymmetric and imperfect approach to patterning. I've always loved that. It holds the story of the maker.

Now older and well loved. 

Which makes it even nicer.

 

I have neglected ThreadCrumbs, the place I made to document my cloth collection.  Because cloth inspires cloth. In this year of renewed UnDoing, I will be further lessening the piles here and sorting and consolidating, with not so future plans for relocating. And so also documenting will continue before I forget the stories of the bits of cloth that are still here. I need to clean up this process, fix links, fix photos, change the format a little, make it useful as a resource. 

This cloth, along with a lot of others, is huge.  I need to clear some wall space for photos.  Soon. As the weather warms.

 

 

Clarification

Three. Pages.

Three is always more indication of going than two.

So I am just looking at these three today.

Two weeks and a day.   A day that seemed bigger than a week.

Note to self: Dividing space gives me a sense of time. As place.

 

And just to clarify.  There are two types of active subscriptions to this place.  There is an email subscription to my blog.  You sign up for that in the sidebar.  That delivers my blog posts by email if you like that better than stopping by.

And then there is Small Journeys. A paid subscription. The behind the scenes teaching series that began in September 2014 and is still ongoing through September 2015,  but is sold out.   It is this series that I am refreshing my mailing list for.  Since a lot of folks often wander off or change their contact information  over the course of a year, I was checking in. I have heard from almost everyone so thank you for the follow up as well as your ongoing attention.

So if I confused some of the rest of you, which is apparent since I got about 1500 extra emails so far since yesterday.... if you simply subscribe to this blog by email, you need not let me know.  Thanks.

The Three Dreamers

Also known as Sun Moon Star Heads.

I added a few more details in an attempt to  express something that just popped into my mind today.  And also to  finish up the winter stray cat series.  This week.  Before warmer weather(hopefully) and  new thoughts take over.

Anyway, I was focused on how they are a group.  How they have a similar direction. With their heads in the clouds that is. And similar roots then, in a way.  That thing that binds them.  But  they radiate different fields, hold their own space. In this case I used colored dots.

You have to look closely to see that. But it is there.

The face on Star head still needs a little work.

Self Reflection

 

After a long winter. In my 64th year.

With new eyes.  Transition lenses halfway between  light and dark.

For the record.