Spirit Cloth

June 1 2017

It Rained.
But it stopped mid afternoon.

It rained this much, a long slow drizzle that started before dawn. I spent a few hours outside and found a huge colony of ground bees nesting next to the old compost pile. So many that I could hear them buzzing. Most folks around here exterminate them. I love them. I love that they are solitary bees but live in a community close by to one another. That they are peaceful and go about their business. Sometimes they bump into me. I hope it is because I seem like a flower.

I tidied the squares of earth. I added flow. I stitched a bit. Accentuating the the thing that stands,the structure, the shelter that is now grounded in movement often gone unnoticed.  And now I am accentuating the the thing that moves through it. The open heart(h). It's swell that the center is a nine(lives)patch.

Today my brother and the love of his life Julio are tying the knot. To build a longer thread. We will go to the old sea, the ocean, where we released our parent's ashes. Just a few of us. And the day will be like a candle in these dark days  where all love seems challenged. And we will not be Lemmings.

Another Nest

So we continue. From here.

You  can see I worked from the edges yesterday. Cutting strips for opposite sides first. Pinning them down, making sure they overlap the edge of the checkerboard section. And then I turned the cloth over and stitched a line of quilting, following the edge of that magic patchwork ring. Just inside the overlap. I then cut shorter pieces for the remaining sides. Letting them both overlap the checkerboard section and the pieces I just added. There are two types of stitching I do to basically coat the "back". The kind that goes all the way through (shows on the "front")and the kind that does not go all the way through (does not show on the "front"). I'll show and tell a bit about that soon, too hot for video.

I am building a hot patchwork ring to bridge the remaining gap. I don't have a lot of big red, but many small warm scraps of self can be put together. I should have enough. This kind of design is like mending.

 

It will be close to 100 degrees today. And it's just to hot and humid for much of anything. Off I go for some early garden work to work up a sweat and then down to the sea to wash it off. And mordant some cloth while I am at it.

You know who seems drawn to the circle. And the shade.

Quilting as More

Color. I sure need a bit of that after 6 straight gray rainy days. And today...again the same.

I've begun stitching over the patchwork studies that sit here from previous "considerings". Good for further trials. I have worked up this style of stitch for a while now but now my focus has shifted to how it might transform quilting into a layer (one thing over another is my favorite kind of alignment) in  new ways. The closeness of the stitches form more deliberate solid areas in contrast with what is showing through.  Giving each (the background and the stitch) more of an identity. Allowing the character of each to develop focus. Making the relationship more visible. With regular quilting, the stitch seems to run though everything and become somewhat more of a diffusing element in a composition. Melting it all together. Sometimes even confusing it all. This moves away from that and has tremendous possibility to transform the visual effect of a patchwork base. Don't you think?

This is an old color study, from Whispering Color, one of the free classes listed in the side bar and at Feel Free.

I took a few stitches and then thought I needed a field as a beginning. A circle maybe, to compare the quilted and not quilted.

In this case, a see through template worked well, helping me position the field for stitch.

I am using a lot of thread ends from the basket, the thread nest, pulling all the warmest reddish shades randomly. I am just after a color field here. And of course, as always, using what's on hand.

Here you can see I am building the stitch up in sections. This keeps the cloth from puckering too much(not using a hoop) and helps me change the direction of the bars. I go back and connect the sections by shifting the stitches and make them lean into one another.

This is a Kantha style stitch. You can google that. Kantha is often described as embroidery (decorative. expressive). And sometimes as quilting (functional). I think I am most taken by the instances of the in between, that is when it is both. How it can be that. I will certainly be talking about that more.

Great balls of fire. What a quilt that might be.

Note to self: This is mighty beautiful.

 

 

Fire inside

Not a silver lining.

Held safe.

Winter Light

 

An old star.

One corner of the  wedding quilt.  Last night.  The cloth folded and placed before the fire.  For tending the fire.  To kneel on when keeping the flames going. Old knees.

The old star holding the reflection of the flame.  That is what I noticed early this morning.  How the warmth dyed the cloth.  For a moment.   It was quite beautiful.  And I became friends with winter again.