Spirit Cloth

Reminded that Love Takes Time

She's back home. The pennant. You remember yes? Mo's project...along with one of Mo's tiny stars. 

And lo and behold...  

she is going to bloom.  I've been nursing this rescued begonia for a year now.

Wendy has sent me an update for the Magic Feather Cloth... her email with some video clips, and the format did not allow me to edit full screen, but enough for you to see. Her email titled:

SEEING DIFFERENTLY

The beautiful girls are sight challenged.

And Wendy shares...The effort of the girls meeting the Magic Feather cloth, is humbling to witness. Once they move into working with HOME, their sight is through their whole body. The work is deeply personal…. and equally, the Magic Feather Cloth allows the two of them to find each other. Every time they worked, it was their decision how to move and whatever they wanted to do together..or apart. They did not speak with each other.  They had not met before this session. They chose to work with music. They worked in silence.….they worked with the cloth for over two hours.

video link if you see no player

You can read more about this project by clicking the feather in the top menu bar which will take you HERE.

Undoing orientation

The wall, sideways. In November. With more light than normal. After a long chilled rainy night, the sun is out. Almost blinding. I turned the photo. But really, maybe, I will hang everything upside down or sideways.

It's cold but not freezing yet. A glorious crisp in between cold. I am unrolling everything today, a sort of seasonal ceremony. Covering the walls in the unheated part of the house.  Maybe to warm those cold walls with evidence of a heartbeat. Also for new eyes.  Looking at things in the cold is different. Weather. Still thinking about weather.

Then finishing some repairs and arranging for the big chill. There is snow coming. We are leaning in.  And while fixing up the loft for sleeping in the heated room, I found More Cloth. Damn. Undoing more is taking way more time than I figured. 

The only cloth I will sit with this week is Home, the Magic Feather Cloth.  A big journey made up of many small ones. Today I will hang it up in the warm room.  Gather all my thoughts. Without words. Ready it for the biggest Journey. The Giving.

Winged things

 

 

Everything on the cloth I call HOME wants to become a flying thing.... there was a lot of becoming today.  Typepad was down and I stitched and planted onions and stitched,  and well,  a lot got done. Mostly embroidery. A good reminder about computer time.  It was just fine.  Most likely, I will migrate away from Typepad....change things up a bit.

I took this picture with my phone's camera. Not bad really.

Rainy Day Being

The weather has turned. Rain, lots of it and cold coming. Another freeze tonight and a few cold days behind it.   We need the fire today.  The cloth I call HOME is on the table. One last corner to quilt. Can't get at it in the hoop.

More feathers will be added here as well, probably some cut  from their backgrounds to retain the feel of the Sky, Space.

Rain,  And wild Wind.  Makes "Chicken" here a little buggy.  He has recently formed a relationship with the still unfinished Alphabet Soup quilt.

Home free

I think I will be able to finish this in the open air.

Note: My facebook account has been hacked, linking me to all kinds of folks I don't know, so I will not be posting there for a while until I find out what it is. 

Free Falling in Cloth

Fog has lifted.

I say it again.  A large cloth is like a world.

Like a world, it's a place where evolution is a given. As things adjust to place. Adapt.

In this cloth that is like a world, things evolve.  Become. One thing becomes another without judgment.  Which is really a relief.

I am still working, missing my April 2 deadline. Which reminds me that they are useless. Dead Lines.  I am also thinking about patience.  How that has nothing to do with waiting really.  Waiting patiently.  No not waiting.  To be patient is being there for as long as it takes.  All the while, one thing is becoming another.

This is the cloth I call Home. I am being in it.

 

Home without words

 

 

 

Baba

So back to the characters that  are part of the cloth I call HOME. (continued from here)

Baba.  Mostly chosen for its Turkish meaning, father, but really a most interesting word.  On the right, as stitched on the Lion Quilt. The first of many story beasts.  Baba. Ancient Feeder of Birds. Keeper of Words. I stitched this one while sitting in the courtyard of a nursing home while my father was undergoing rehab after his stroke.  He never really recovered.  To the left is the first magic feather.  This cloth, as I look back, contains almost everything I later came to develop as a stitcher. It is a history.  It holds the moments in which  I lost a certain kind of fear and gained a certain sense of myself as a cloth maker and story teller.  Each character is identified with holding the responsibility for something important to me.  Keeping something safe. This character is my Father.

For HOME, I have named the beast The Explainer. 

When I made the lion quilt, I based a lot of my imagery on research and combined things I found into new form.  I don't really do that much any more. I close my eyes to find what is there.  Maybe that's the same thing, just more of an inner journey.  To pull out and record what has been gathered, to raid the inner basket self.

These beasts are imagined ancient wild things. That roam and teach and provide companionship on life's journey.  I think it might be interesting to set them free this time.  To share them. Let them be moveable components.  UnDo unnecessary attachment.

I think back to here. When I asked myself...What if a big cloth could be a giant sand tray? A healing game. Big enough to be in?

And Here I am. We are.

 

thoughts on Inside Out

I stitched well into the night.  I'm not really a night person.  The man is. Not me.  Maybe because I really feel out of sorts sleeping and waking when it is light out.  Out of my element.  Inside out in a way. When I sew at night, it's different.  I'm not as sure.

This morning was warm.  Today will be warmer still.  As the season changes Soul-o spends more time at the window.  Of course the bird-feeder draws attention.  But I sense a longing.  One that I never felt before with a cat.  Perhaps I feel the connection with the outside. There is still so much wildness in this one.  There is so much less fear in the window gazing.  As if there is a memory of comfort  that goes beyond nice and warm.

I snapped this shot from under the hoop. I really love the picture. This ring of vision. The contrast and comfort of the other side. It is a kind of hiding place. Yet someplace raw, that another might not feel as close to.

The cloth has two sides. They all do. We all do.  Just thinking about that. What it means to feel inside out.

something like Holding Breath

I  tend to treat quilting as a kind of surface management.  Even though its simple purpose is to connect layers.  Maybe more about quilting and layers  later.  But just to say that this picture shows how, after waiting a while, the cloth held by the river of stitch has relaxed .  Into the stitch.  The movement held still in such a soft way.  On this cloth we call HOME.

And now in the hoop, it holds its own.  Like a living thing.  I am going to quilt the in between flat.  Today I look at this section.  So much space.  But filled really.   Space.  Full of space.

The cold has moved through. And even though a few warm days will bring another burst of cold, it won't be as cold. And even though there might be a bit of snow, it won't stay as long.  If it stays at all.  So, tomorrow I will open the studio. Clear all the junk we've been piling there while we have heated this one room for the winter.  Spring is about to take hold. I feel it. I feel grateful that it might be so close. And there is weave waiting to be considered.