Spirit Cloth

A Studio Day

A warm one. Before another polar vortex. I put my winter bitch in the closet.

I will build one small fire, warm up the stove. Since the sun is out, that's enough for the day.

On a lighter note, this will be a Stoodio Day.

The lightness took over yesterday. When I patched Joy back to my center.

Stitching, anticipating February, weathering a storm before it happens, stitching, sewing snow, S(new)ing...? Snewing. Probably with out the context, we might read it Snoowing.  Oh ha.

The patches are half dipped indigo, two stitched together seemed to be a snowscape. The cloth is doublewoven, from an old baby blanket, so I did not add my normal extra layer.  Maybe you remember this Cloth Story. More of those to come. Materials are like good friends, every day you learn a little more about them.

Cloth and Cold

Cloth is useful. Again.

This is the studio table now, not in the studio, but useful for spreading out, etc., as the temperatures remain below freezing for the 3rd day in a row. The table top was rocking a bit. A scrap of silk was just enough to change that.

All the cloth around here is used. As I age I relate more and more.

I'm not feeling right today. The chill is in me. I think I'll take it easy and do some extra napping.

The cold has also become useful. Helping us begin considering moving to someplace warmer than previously considered.

Looking back we see everything has been, is, will be...useful.

She has a few more stitches. Fringe. She continues.

Dad, who passed away in January, now years ago, his painting is in the background.

 

 

The Way it Might Fit Together...

So now it's way cold.

Not complaining, just saying.

I'm just sitting with this one. Wanting to do a video but it's just too cold in the studio. And not good at the phone video thing yet. Because we thought we wouldn't be here we didn't cut our own wood this year. Wood here is expensive and even more so this season, a story about that later. So not heating the studio.

I cut away the cloth around the figure because i was intending to make a pillow and then I thought... I don't need a pillow. So now it's a long cloth, a pathwork.  I added this piece to the bottom, because it was there, like a puzzle piece. It just fit there.

This piece of cloth is old. You can see how it has faded. It was a pillow cover for a while. Sun washed. I got this cloth long ago on a trip to Paris. When I was working in the textile industry. Shopping for ideas to present to fashionable folks. And ideas for my mill to develop cloth from. Another cloth story to be told in detail soon. For now, it fits fine here. And I left the bottom edge open so I might slide some fringe in there. Like I do. To say "continuing".

And yes I did weave the cloth beneath. Right around 1974.

I plan (ha) to send out another issue of the Feel Free Newsletter  early next week.  Please, if you subscribe to this Newsletter, use an active email address. I have decided to begin this year's Sharing Series in February.  I think I will start on my birthday. Details will go out in the Newsletter.  This series is not Free. But Free Enough, which changes in the context of my ability to live on thread alone.

 

 

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.

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.