Spirit Cloth

Late August Patchwork

Acorns have been falling.

Mostly encouraged by squirrels.

I've been thinking about my folks. It always comes in between seasons. The two acorns reminded me of them. Together. Through whatever was.

Yes it's been a bit cooler. But this week will be hotter still. And humid. I always remember the late heat that often coincided with going back to school. The hot un-airconditioned classrooms. The difficulty concentrating. How Dad would be home waiting to whisk us off to the beach for a late swim. Like a little bit extra summer vacation.

 

I stitched a moon cabin. Because I am preparing for my Patchwork in Perspective. I'm looking back fondly at  my patched past. Gathering. Documenting. Reconsidering its use to give it wholeness. There's a bit of Mom's wedding dress in there. The silk velvet. Dyed blue like the old sky. She gave it to me and said make something out of it, make it useful. I could have altered it and made it into a dress. But I don't much wear dresses. I like it better like this. Holding the late August moon. For all of us. Part of the bigger basket.

 

Being In It.

 

I used to paint and draw

all the time.

Self Portrait. Being process. 1974

There has been a lot of sorting through old journals and drawings  this year. The Loose Pages. At one point in time, I cut a lot of the tiniest doodles off odd scraps of paper and envelopes, shopping lists  and what ever it was I drew on. They became scraps in a shoebox. Visual notes to self. I liked them like that for the longest time. Now I am cataloging them. Digitally. Naming them. Providing a way to reconsider them. But then they go back in the box. Because I still like them that way. How I might pick one out and put it into the context of the day. Kind of like a paper component system, that is my thought today. A joyous thought actually.

One and sun

Numbering just to keep track. Why not?

In a way I am measuring time.

So I marked this one 1. I do remember starting here.  The old cloth has writing woven right in. But it is hard to see what it says. An old cotton sateen, but not that old. This is the first 6" block I made. Just one piece. A beginning. I drew  a 1 and wrote the word one. not sure which way to go. But beginnings, including this one, are often like that. I slipped when I drew the 1. I will erase that little slip  by stitching (split backstitch) over it with thread. It is a record all the same. As I go I will fill in the squares on the paper with numbers. This will help me map out the basic layout. For now.

It is raining today so it was nice to see the sun block right next to 1.  It will be 2. Not that it was, but it is now. I wanted to do do a bit of video here, but the day is too dark and rain makes me lazy about those things.

This block looked like this before the face wore off.  I had padded it with a piece of batting, and noticing it was the synthetic kind, I cut it off instead of recovering it.  I don't use the polyester kind of batting ever any more. Polyester is "hard". It can actually cut through old cloth (which I use a lot) as it rubs. Not to mention that the fibers migrate and get into your skin. So. Gone. These things I learned later, so now I go forward with where my thought have arrived.

So you can see, I had arranged the petal appliques around a circle and then added a padded circle to the center and then covered that with cloth and quilted the face which gave it dimension.

I think I will try something like this for the mending:

This video is from one lesson in the Sun Mon Stars workshop

 

 

click here to watch the video if you see no player or a black box.