Spirit Cloth

T is for Tapestry

Tapestry is a key concept for me.

I've added it to the Glossary at Feel Free. Just so there is a place to catch my thoughts as I reconsider its importance.

 

direct video link of you see no player

 

The light test.

Layers are so important, but so is transparency.

You cannot share it if it can't move through you.

 

I mentioned the split back stitch here.  I'll be adding the stitch menu to the Method Index at Feel Free this week. Under stitch.  Some catching up to do, in between issuing passwords. The weather has cooled a bit again. Might even need a small fire tonight.

How a day moved through

Wood stacked. There was even sweeping!

And I managed to expand the silk lining. Now I can begin "walking" around the center.

The stitch in the center is settling in. As it does. Eventually the ripple ripens. As the layers touch and get to know each other, the bond deepens.

Although the center panel is now 3 layers deep, the choice of cloth has not taken away the lightness.

The weather has warmed so needle walking will be replaced with real walking today. To the sea. To the sea.

Each Step a Choice

Yesterday. I spent the day being kind.

Purposefully and Unconditionally, yet Quietly kind. And I felt so cleansed at the end of it all. Then I stitched.

And suddenly my video mojo returned.

 

click here to watch video if you see no player above.

So just that. One strand this time. To retain lightness. Sometimes, a lot of times, stitching overpowers design. Quilting especially. Sometimes by not being visible or at least being aware of presence, sympathetic to possibility, a stitch can be kind to the eye and to the cloth. And still hold things together.

It's raining again.

 

Still Standing

The Spirit of Standing Up.

I named it that.

I thought to leave it simple.  But it is not simple really.  The figure is embedded in goings on, context.  The flow doesn't stop. You stand in spite of it. Hold ground. There is a lot more turbulence to come.  Practice balance.

I love how the cloth has begun to curve in the areas of dense stitching. That's the nature of the cloth yielding to the spirit of the stitch.  Ripples form. Pull things off grid.  I named that part the learning curve. A new symbol perhaps.

The rain stopped but the leaky part of the  roof almost fell in.  Time must be taken to address the situation. Mend the hole. We'll give in and fix it. Hope it doesn't cost too much. Hope they don't have to open it up. It's a bit chilly for that.   But February is sure to bring snow.  And snow is wet and heavy.

 

 

 

It's relatively cooler. Yes. Drier? Not so much. Since humidity drives me close to insanity, Sanity seemed a sensible direction. So I'm back to it. Specifically , back to here with the feeling it gave me. The thread that runs through it. Which condenses so many ideas down to less. Less is good in this weather.  Some times I just drape white sheets over everything. It slows me down and cools me down.

 

 

So the woven line. It really is like a running stitch. Made while weaving. So much related to stitch. Bringing me back to the root sense of how sewing is weaving. How those two things are entangled in the forms that emerge in my work.

 

 

And the line part of it. Here the seams and the stitched lines. Like drawing. A thread again that runs through me. It.  I've begun to really concentrate on the thread lines. How many ways they run through it. Might run through it.

So far in the context of this patchwork:

The woven lines might seem like seam lines.

The seam lines might seem like drawn lines.

The stitched line might seem like drawn or seam lines.

The stitched lines might continue or connect seam lines or woven lines, dividing the space like the other.

Each kind of line has a different character but is still useful as a line. Line as it divides space.

 

I did a lot of thinking about this in Whispering White, so I'll bring a lot of that back here in the context of the Sanity project. And maybe when this humidity lifts I can figure out what is wrong with my video situation and get rolling again.

Woven out and in

 

In a smaller, slower and simpler  way, I inch my way back. While August seems a bit like September, I am wondering what September will seem like.  Then I laugh  knowing that it doesn't matter what it seems like.

In considering (reconsidering really) weave, I am finding a renewed sense of  Natural Order.

A bit of sanity. So to speak.

Ready again to consider all things. Through weave.

In one way or another.

Becoming Spring

Full Worm Moon.  2013.

At the time of this spring Moon, the ground begins to soften and earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of robins.
Algonquin.

The fulling of this moon is not quite complete, because I sort of lost track of time.  Spring has been so slow coming.   I'm still at it.  So is spring.

Winter deepens

Mom Slept.

Snow fell.

Cloth stayed in my mind.  

Since my time is thinner these days, I will be blogging less in order to fulfill my commitment to the Spirit Cloth Diaries.   But I will talk more about that later.

Mom gave me a whole bunch more of this sheer linen.  She was saving it .  From great grandma.  Never seen anything like it anywhere.  Cloth is the best gift.  For me.   She knows that.  I have more stitched wings on my mind.

Woven through Going

I am just trying to get Through a few things at the moment.  All the while, pinning a few things here, stitching a few things there.    And today  getting out of the grey for a while.   Focusing on Through,   understanding it as   some sort of multi layered going.   A biggere sense of Continuing.    More integrated.  Something like weaving.  

Fringe has always been an important component for me.    Over the years it evolved into my personal symbol for continuing.      And there is a lot to say about that.     Probably it will result in a whole lot of What-iffing.   I think I will even be Whispering Fringe.  Which I can't get to at the moment because a lot of things are moving through me .  And  vice versa.

This wrapped fringe is from a strap I wove for a hand woven bag  in 1971 ( I think) .   There used to be feathers on the ends, but they have disappeared.  It needs a bit of repair  but it reaches way back.    Which adds to its  symbolism.     How it started out as a thread unnoticed and moved through my life.

After 6 grey days, the sun came out. 

My brother will be here , all the way form Idaho, for a few days.   Actually, the whole family  will be gathered around Mom, who hasn't been feeling too well.  She is getting old.  We will move through  a few days days together,  and I will be back later.

 (this piece continued from here)

Restoring sanity

 

It was probably back in 2007,  that the idea struck me.  Not named, but  increasingly ever present.   And around that time,  I was recording  my  idea stream  in a blog called What if(?), which I turned into a private place of record keeping for a while.   All of this was way back, before there was  such a large community here.  Some of you remember.

What ifs were clips of process.  More like questions and answers.   Just the very beginnings.  Seeds.  Well anyway, this one just kept going.  Growing quietly,  slowly, like things with good roots do.  I used the technique here and there in other work,  but I made many small  singular and focused samples.  100 to be exact.  Studies  and components for a body of larger works which are in process.  I never talked about them here.  This project has been part of a personal space I cleared for myself for a while.  A place less cluttered with words and such.  These cloths, I feel,  have their own art and cloth voice, and I don't need to say a lot about them.  One of the ways I like to define sanity is simply clarity of being. 

So anyway, the one above is Sanity 101.

Because I am not anywhere near sane.

I will be bringing What if  back in a new form at year's end.

As a separate learning space.