Spirit Cloth

Hunker Down in a Field

 

The freeze is gone, I'd say.

May's Womb. Still a chill at night, but I trust we have crossed the line, here in The Valley. The unexpected snow has cleared the air.

The rain has quenched a thirst. 

Stitching without saying much, Needle Chanting, has quenched another.

I have weathered the storm.

The beginnings were simple here. Already present from way back. Looked at for a long time. Years.

A ragged nine cobbled from dyed cloth made during Whispering Color. And then creating the circle field to stitch within , like I do. A field of stitch can hold a lot of stray bits together. Create One-ness.  When I use thread beads I call it the Snow Globe effect.  Here, a stacked running stitch. Kantha. Maybe the Grow or Flow Globe effect. Imagine this bigger. Oh my. I have done it slightly larger but what about huge?  When I began a few days ago, I said it will take forever. It didn't. I stitched through snow, sun, rain, hail and a lot of wind. And now there are flowers. Imagine stitching through all four seasons. Oh. Ideas. Four Globes, one for each season. Four quilts maybe? Ha! I'm back!

This one though, will remain smaller. And only seem bigger. It was a big help to me in the last days.

Being imperfect, a little egg shaped, I suddenly thought womb. And those tie like corners that make it seem so apron like. I think then it is part of the woman series. Womb Woman.  Womb Woman's Apron. Need to work on the ties a bit. I can hang it from those. It turned into a little holiday cloth then. A Mother's Cloth. 

There is a lot of Deb's thread here.

 

Hunker Down and Transform a Surface

So we started from scratch here, but the same method I will show here could apply if you just decide to resurface any old garment, like a bathrobe or a robe that has worn out etc. Here I will cover the entire surface, but if working with a pr-existing garment you might just decorate certain areas while mending at the same time. Redesigning is mending too, in my world. Design Mending. 

 

Coating a base with pre-pieced strips

So with the goal of coating the sheet based garment with a second light weight layer, and to use up a lot of small scraps, I want to talk about what I will call pre-pieced foundation patching. Based on a habit I developed a while back, piecing scraps, grouped by color, developed to both organize and store a stash of color related bits. And to live with process...

Here I decided to coat the base with pre-pieced scrap. And I have chosen a neutral palette, thinking that wind is somewhat colorless. And also because I had a lot of neutral eco-dyed scrap. Especially brown, so easy. That is how I began. Consider this a way to use any leftover patchwork as well. And to transform  a surface into something else.

 

Link to video if you see no player above.

My approach to simple hand piecing here can still be found at Feel Free's Methods Index...under Patchwork/Piecing

link to audio if you see no player 

The patchwork I was temporarily using as a curtain was pieced on the machine and then dipped in the black walnut dye and left for a few weeks. I blogged about something similar here. One way to get similar colored scraps is to over-dye them as a group. Anyway, now I am cutting the large patched color blanket into strips to use in this project.

Additional strips are being made straight from the scrap basket. As needed.

link to video if you see no player.

link to video 3 if you see no player above.

I had in mind here, to keep things light, only coating the front, but the same method could be used on the inside, in this way, you can achieve a reversible garment where the base actually ends up to be the batting.  This concept is where my quilt making and robe making might overlap. I often work from both sides of a foundation when making a blanket. Quilt. There is so much more to say about that. My internet is fading again, so next time.

Stray Stitches

They began that way.

Then I thought...

Stitch by stitch. Eventually she becomes visible.

Yes, stitch by stitch, I make myself visible. I suppose I could just as easily pull them all out. I left some loose ends just in case.

It's September. Imagine that. Already. Poof.

Things come and go

Many arrangements were washed away with the day.

I ended up with this.

She. Still standing. Not swept away. Washed by it, that which flows through. Kantha legs are strong.

The additions are all silk. Which started with the foggy silk moon, veiled in summer leaves, a reflection of the moody day, the dot itself in sympathy with the house of time passing. The background in sympathy with blue already there. Blending.

And then the river. Nobody does flow better than Glennis. I love her shibori silk ribbon because of that, and how it is so liquid. You can make it flow around anything, if you have the mind to try.

I imagine there will still be wings. It's not time yet.

Thinking in Advance

The center of Endless Wishing is basted.

All pins are gone. Like most larger cloths I often quilt the center before I extend it. Not always but often. I do this because it is easy to get at. Easier to handle. And often how the center is stitched sets the tone for the rest of the cloth. Again, just my approach.

I will still need to sit with the cloth and consider it's weight and thickness, before stitching.  Perhaps I'll talk about managing layers a bit.  But I just added a video to the QUILTING page over at Feel Free. Part of my organizing. I used a similar collage method in the video and I will use a similar quilting method here. The video has been included here as well:

 

Kantha Style Quilting from Small Journeys

click here if you see no video player

 

It will be hotter than hot here today.

Filling a Space with a Field of Stitch

Stars are continuing.

Because I need a million and I am counting the ways.

The field of stitch is a nice less dense way, to create shapes, focus, and texture without covering the background. I discussed this a while back in Small Journeys, here, naming it at times in the past as Coloring Book Quilting and the Snow Globe effect.

It works well here, because I often use thread beads as stars, points of light I guess. And now the star is made up of stars. Stardust. This is an easy way to transform one shape into another. I can imagine other ways too, can you? There is a sort of vibrating outward going on. This resist dyed square is a bit bigger. 2" Still shibori dyed, and the center is a field of stacked running stitch (which is really a form of Kantha worked very close together). I've used fields of stitch so much, it has really become part of my stitching style.

I need to dye more of these larger squares. It's warm outside. I'll go check the vat.

Here is another star with a field of running stitch. The fields of stitch can be design and the quilting stitch at the same time. I love when design is useful.

Simple really, but so cool.

It just so happens that this piece will become the center of the Endless Wishing Cloth. A celebration in Old Sky.

Ha! How things eventually come together...

A wishing cloth is a great project. Make a wish, stitch it up, sew it on. It'll grow faster than you think. And it might be shelter from a storm.

A little talking, despite the construction going on in the background, towards the end. Somebody is building a house way too big for my liking. But hey, Feel Free I say.

 

click here if you see no player or a black box

 

The Wishing Diaries then...

Deep in Days

Outdoors. I spend time outdoors. Most of it. 

And moved all the computer stuff up to a corner of the sleep loft. For good. Out of sight until nightfall. Keeping me from sitting there too much.

Outdoors then. Except yesterday we got tons of rain and I kept stitching on this Kantha Moon (continued from here.). It has taken so long for the stacked stitch to begin to define it. But now it is getting there. It's a needle chant. I dyed some indigo thread but my estimate is short. The rest of the blues will vary because I am going to overdye some unused colored thread ends in order to complete the dark portion.

I like these two coming close. But I think they will move on to their own space. The deep orange square of cloth was a hand dye from someone else and it does not hold its color well as I recall. So as a blanket, that needs to be washed,not. A looking orb I think.

I feel myself fading into summer.

Quietly wandering.

A New Phase

This. An old base. A woven patchwork base.

You might guess where I am going with this one. Some new paths for stacking stitch. I am working on a cloth woven base. You might catch the basics of cloth woven patchwork over at Spirit Cloth 101, the BASE section. I plan to add my cloth weaving class (Cloth to Cloth) to The list of Open Classes soon enough. This base was created with an anchored method which makes the cloth into sort of a loom in itself. So let me put that here now.

 

video link if you see no player

I have added a page at Feel Free, under Cloth Weaving- Weaving Into for this technique. There is much more to say about it after all this time.

The stacked stitching gives body to a cloth so it works well to stabilize the woven base. A nice contrast I think.  Also here, I will use two color fields to form the moon, the light area to form a crescent. I will use home dyed indigo thread for the dark part of the circle. So I will crank up the vat for that.

I used a dinner plate to trace the circle. Just to get a sense of scale. Most blues here have been dyed over-dyed in indigo. Scraps of blue self. I also added a few loosely woven silk scraps to accent the edge and add texture, and will see how well this kantha style stitch might blend them into the surface and hold them.

I have gone ahead and added a thin cotton lawn, dyed in indigo, to the back. Tacked it down. To give it all a bit more body before stitching. And again I am making no attempt to make a neat back, still concentrating on how the stitch might be a composition element. And using many many short thread ends in the process.

I think also, now that the weather is warming a bit, I will be entering a new phase of Feel Free. Like all things not focused on, it is beginning to get away from me and needs attention. Perhaps if I concentrate on recording one thing at a time, like the running stitch, for each month, it will help me build the page base on my new site. And I am considering a few other things. Like a community gallery page. And enhancing the information base by inviting contributors. And that's enough thoughts for now. Transplanting indigo today.

Thank you all for your support. And have a good weekend.

May Light

Cannot get enough of May's mornings. Though it was barely 40 here when I woke.

Fire building again.

This will end up being the center of something. And in my mind I am already calling it The Thread that runs through It.

Since it is chilly today and I have a fire going,I'll make use of that.  I will boil up the pot of windfall and food scraps and such that I have sitting here and throw some old cloth in it, then clean up the copper pot and put it to rest for the season. Based on my experience, I expect Yellow Earth to be the color of the day. And this to be the last fire of the season.

 

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.