Spirit Cloth

Three little Things

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Yesterday I strayed from Mending.

But not really.

 

December 11 2016

Star Patches

 

Blurry and then Not

5:30 AM. a diary day.

I slept hard.

You know, right through.

Mostly that doesn't happen. I wake often. And Soul-o wakes me. To talk, to eat. To go out, to... just to wake me. Last night he slept. Up early, both of us.  My camera takes weird pictures in low light lately.  It has many settings. It isn't the camera, it is me not knowing about all of that. So this morning is blurry even after a good sleep.

7:15 AM

There is a red sky this morning. Dad, being a sea guy always said...

Red sun at night, sailors' delight.Red sun at morning, sailors take warning.

I always liked this version better...Shakespeare.

“Like a red morn that ever yet betokened,

Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds,

Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”

This photo looks like one of Dad's watercolors. I think of Dad. I think of turbulence. Not in terms of fear. But in terms of life.

Later, I sit here. At the mending table.

Thinking back. How naive I was when I made this quilt.  That is what distances me from it now. I long for simpler times. Yet I have left them behind, as we do.

The ring around the center Nine will alternate sun and moon. Time passing. And this cloth definitely needs a bit of turbulence. And a little less Pollyanna. It will grow up over time.

8:40 AM

Note to self, although not a new one.

Mending is Design. Design is Mending.

PS, it's that time again. Blog remodel time. Expect interruptions.

 

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.

MapMending

 

The sun is out. Old sea, she greets me each morning.

Soul-o likes it better ON the table.

I did not record the making of this one.

Not like I do now.

Long ago, I found a roll of old brown paper. It' heavy and soft and I always thought I would use it. Finally I have something to use it for. On the wall then, behind the mending table, stretched out, a place to map this cloth. Because as I mend, I will try to remember. I started a while back, drawing my work.  This is a bit different I think. I have many thoughts. They will unfold.

I have determined that my basic block size was 6".  And that if I scale the drawing so that a 2" square represents each 6" block, it will fit on the paper.  I have gridded it in pencil. Darkening the 25 block section that was the starting point, as I recall.  As I took the photo, with the sun behind me it reminded me of the silhouettes we did in kindergarten. We used a projector, traced each others shadows on black paper, cut them out and mounted them on white paper.  Gifts for parents to take home on open school night. I must have mine somewhere. Anyway, this is a PlaceKeeper. A map. And something new.

Standing on the chair, this is the center section, where I began, before the ring of cats. Already strays in my mind. As things progressed this was no longer the center mathematically speaking. Personal math has it's own rules. There are many places to mend. I'll take them one by one while remembering. Mending gaps in memory while patching holes in cloth. Mending your own work is such gentle timekeeping.

And here's that poem again...

And what is life? A crazy quilt;
Sorrow and joy, and grace and guilt,
With here and there a square of blue
For some old happiness we knew;
And so the hand of time will take
The fragments of our lives and make,
Out of life's remnants, as they fall,
A thing of beauty, after all.

a scrap... part of a poem by Douglas Malloch

 

OLD Earth Beast returned last night.

Fireside.

Roaming outside the ""box" which this time happens to be a circle. A comfort zone has many forms.

The original stray.  1973

Mending today has been interrupted by the need to go somewhere and help someone out. Then again, that is part of mending too. Maintaining usefulness. Lending a helping hand. Being Kind. Patient. 

The Mending Room

The quilt in need of mending was on the studio floor yesterday. I wanted to spread it out, sit with it.

But it's December and time to save wood for colder days. And today is a colder day.

The studio is only opened on warm sunny afternoons when a fire is not necessary.

So I have set up mending camp in the small room below the sleeping loft.

Really it just has a table, a few chairs, plants and cloth on walls. We use this as a dining table when we have company which is almost never these days. So now. This morning. It has become the permanent mending table. A table is a great tool.

The room seems bigger because the outside seems part of it. Sun Moon and Stars built right in. The man cut 6" from the legs of both the table and the chairs a while back. Because I like low stuff.  It's a bit confusing when folks come over and cannot quite figure out what is different. '

I am really loving quilts as table coverings lately. Table blankets. I like this place to begin this mending ceremony. Reminds me of a Quilting Bee*. I feel like we are all about to sit down together and fix stuff. Ready? A Mending Bee then.

*Bee - a social gathering to carry out some communal task.

 

Soul-o is under there.

 

December and Blanket

December. Way warm. Hardly need a blanket so far.

In December I will mend. Tend. To the human wrapping cloths as I like to call them.

Get back to blanket.

I put the sketch, altered a bit, here. Again. Blanket. Full-Circle.

There are many large cloths here, some still in process. Cloth I might consider blankets. The Cat Quilt, the Wedding Quilt, the Lion Quilt, Coma, the Magic Cloth, Magic Cloth 2, Holding Pattern, Nest of Days, Sanity. There are also many unnamed cloths destined for blanket status.

I started Spirit Cloth as a blanket maker. I make a note of that today. On this first day of December. In December I will mend the blankets that are in need of that. That patching ceremony for continuing that celebrates "Peace Piece on Earth".

 

And so I will consider (well, reconsider) Blanket. Because there is something quite important that has to do with blanket. And me as a maker. And it has fallen between the cracks many times. But it is not lost. Mending is a great needle chant as background for (re)considering.

I already added 3 simple patches on the Cat Quilt. I kept the idea of stars in my mind.   The blue square patch has been quilted in a star pattern. The small ragged patch, double kantha stitched, always reminded me of stars. And #1? We'll see. I am expanding the idea to Sun and Moon and Stars. I'll patch this cloth with those. They have a sense of eternity about them.

 

Patch

There will be no sunshine today.

I saved some from yesterday.

This is the avocado I started from a pit last year. I didn't think it would make it. But it is fine and strong. It needs a bigger pot.

As I began mending last night I took a bit of time to remember how the Cat Quilt came together (still considering a rename). My quilt math was based on 1,2,3. One inch, 2 inch and 3" squares initially.  Which expanded into 6", 12" and 18" block sizes. I realize I will not try to restore this in terms of the design. Instead I will use the process to remember and record. And apply what I have learned. Which is really how I have changed.

A big quilt is a timekeeper.

I have included here, an excerpt from my Boro 1 workshop. I started patching this quilt back then. Already opening to new ways.

 

click here to watch video if you see no player

 

I will be adding a mending section to FEEL FREE. But I am going to switch the format first so let's look forward to a new FEEL FREE with the New Year. Mending is always a good way to finish a year. And begin another.

Comments are back on, I've had enough of myself.