Spirit Cloth

Ready for October

She

SHE is part of the earth here now.

But a Long History.

She guards the circle of time on Magic Cloth 2.

I'll make her more visible. It's time.

And there will be time away. Maybe pics, no words.

Some Old Thing

Years and years ago, I made this patchwork for a pillowcase.

I gave it to my mother.

It was one of my first patchworks where I departed from commercial fabrics. In fact the yellow squares at the border are cut from my high school gym-suit. I clearly remember high school gym. Probably because I was always embarrassed by the teacher because I was not athletic.

I got it back to repair. But time passed and so did Mom. It's not a pillowcase anymore. It's a story fragment. I cut part of it off to use in something else. I don't remember when or what. But it's probably buried in this blog somewhere. The indigo is new. I can say I patch with dye. And of course, there is a lot more to say about dyed patchwork when I pull it together. I hung this on the wall to remind myself to do that.  I've not time for a lot of things right now.

It's raining. Way more rain than we need really. It just keeps raining.  Yesterday, after waiting so long for a dry day, I had some wood dumped. I covered it with a tarp, not having time to stack. And expecting a shower. It's been raining all night and still raining. Like a monsoon. At sunrise, no tarp and a big pile of drenched wood.

Excuse me, but SHIT.

Moon Face Resurfaces

Some of you have followed for so long.

Remember MoonFace?

I suppose this patched format was the original "stray cat" format, although I was mostly thinking lion back then. Something more comfortably wilder. I made this one as part of a Faceless series, still considering face, how we share that, but yet how personal it is. Face. Is this one faceless or is it all faces? The face of time? Don't mind me. I'm in between. Asking a lot of questions and reconsidering all things.

I dipped the edges again here. Haphazardly.

I forgot to put the trash out this morning, but I still remember exactly where all these fabrics came from.

My final online workshop series will be 9 segments. The method used here, I call Skitch-Skatch (stitching and patching over a sketch), will be one of them. Each segment will be 1 month long. There may be spaces in between depending on the "move".  You will be able to subscribe separately to any one or all of them, choosing the format that works for you. I will create the series description soon enough. I feel emboldened. I'm gonna work right though it.

Someone came by to take pictures of the inside of the house yesterday. He politely asked me not(!) to remove my work from the walls. He thought it created an interesting mood. Oh ha!

 

Why it's worth it.

The sharing. It works both ways.  Karen, who had recently purchased a few threadcrumbs from the shop shared a little story (how I love stories) about the work she does. She runs a non-profit company that works with a special group of young adults. You can check them out here…

http://www.ycuatlanta.org/

https://mistermigs.com/

I was kindly given permission to show the photos here. I just had to share the beautiful smiles and cloth.

So with a few loose dyed patches, a shirt worn down to almost bare thread, some silk received as wrapping on a recent birthday gift and red denim which had been saved from years back, they made this! 

Gosh, it's so great to see this.

Thank you so much, for renewing my faith in

the Spirit of How it Might Go!

How it Might Happen

So here is my compass. Again.

Framed with a hug.

A bit off center but maybe it's just dancing.

Keeper of the Dance perhaps.

Something different. But cloth whispering all the same. Sure about that.

I'm playing the ThreadCrumbs game today. This one will be for sale, after a bit more quilting, for $85.00. It is 6.75" x 8.5". Cotton, hand pieced and stitched. A traveling companion and a placekeeper. Email me if you want your name in the basket.  Gotta go. Will pick a name later. If you don't hear from me, maybe next time.

GAME CLOSED, picking a name.

Karen L, I sent you an email.

Shine On

 

 

Considering What Is as the Path to Change

Change can seem abrupt.

But it's not, the edge of it stretches right into what is and out the other side.

Design Mending. It's life.

audio link if you see no player

There's a for sale sign at the edge of the property and another at the head of the private road/driveway. I see it every time I look out. Seems like everything has changed, but really it's pretty much the same. Which is to say, everything has changed.

I was going to say I'll be away, but really I'm still where I am. Wherever that is. Summer has passed for now and there is a fire burning. Not spending too much time online, hope you are all fine.

I'm going to go and stitch this down. I like it.

 

Again the Crossover

Weaving and Sewing.

Woven dots and other designs that use supplementary thread to make designs during the weaving process are often referred to as On Loom Embroidery. Probably I mentioned that before.

Here is a beauty I found in the scrap basket yesterday. And old cotton sheer with a soft red thread running across, caught at intervals, skipping across spaces, the float being clipped later, called a clip spot. On one side it appears as a dot, on the other side you can see how it is caught in the thin white weave. Looking through the cloth you can see the red thread and the dot elongates showing the structure.

I dipped this one to test the developing indigo yesterday. And I will send it to Hazel. She is already having fun with this idea since my last post about it.

I have so many cloth stories to tell. Probably because I have so many cloth friends.

And I did the first dip on the edge. Early this morning.

 

Living Nine

This one is an evolution. A moving on. In the spirit of that.

In a way it feels like it is about being in more than one place at a time.

It embraces the circle and the grid as one thing. And I hear the beasts singing.

I see it as a NinePatch as well, which has become a bit like my fingerprint.

I am holding it and I will work on it in these next days until it is done.

This week it started. We hired a listing agent and will be thrust into selling before we thought we were ready. Because we will never be ready. Why we are leaving is so complex. But we will simply apply change to a life that has become too much a habit. I know my time here will be limited for a while. At least. But I'll be circling.

Later today I'll dip the edges of this one in the vat that is brewing. To make a darker edge/frame, not saddened but deepened like the great beautiful unknown.

And then I'll clean out the garage.