Spirit Cloth

Summoning

 

For those of you subscribed by email, there is a video below and if you see no player you can watch it directly in YouTube by clicking this link.

I am a firm believer in Form Follows Function. And to extend that into the spirit of the thing, if you have no use for what you are making/doing, it will not turn out to be anything much at all. Usefulness is a broad concept. Maybe you need to make a living, maybe you need a blanket, maybe you need simply to see what happens. But there has to be something. For it to be something. 

This one is forming. Through intention. Even though I remain on the edge of what it might look like. I want it to be a two sided blanket, I don't want one side to be more than the other. I want it to center me and yet express empathy. To give visual form to that. No matter what it looks like. 

The red. Such an odd addition. But I like that it fits, make the candy colors work more deeply. As I drew and expanded the original red lines, stitched and then thought the split stitch was too blah and would also take too long, I switched to my signature Wrap Stitch, (here, stitched only on the top layer) I drew some dividing lines, for the bars, and suddenly those spikes seemed like backbones.  And courage popped into my head. And then the words...to become whole again, to heal, requires courage. 

I spent a long time stitching, and not one single minute watching either convention. I feel clear headed. And that is what I need this one for. 

Caught by Just going

Here I am. With a little help from a friend.

How about that? (quoting Mom here)

Path. On the wall. On the wall for many days, through this and that. Hasn't grown. Probably I set myself down by the stream of life, to rest.

Like most bigger cloths, smaller cloths find places to stay a while.

Now more than ever, I find myself acknowledging how hard it is to explain how I think, what I think, why thought is so elusive yet vital for understanding. How I've often compromised my true thoughts to accommodate connection. To validate, we seek approval by acknowledging a common path... Still, it is the strangeness of thought that I find most useful. How useful it is to realizing new form, even if no one else ever catches it. So much time passes, I feel someone somewhere must understand, but then after so much time of substituting the love of approval for personal truth, well, form often twists into some more acceptable shape.  Truth may simply not fit to the agenda.

Path has form also. How we go. In itself it is as much "a work" as it is "a way" to the work. It takes time to be able to step back and look at it. 

The other day, when I posted that lovely John Lewis photo over on Instagram, one of my followers commented "I'm confused, what the hell does this have to do with cloth?"  In a very tell tale moment, I deleted the comment and did not take the time to explain.  I think this is a sign of our times. And my age.

I did say to myself, though, the cloth is a metaphor. And I added , in my mind, "asshole". Was that me thinking? Or was it someone else?

Anyway, 3 things pinned there. Not just pinned, but thoughtfully pinned. This caused me to consider 3 aspects of path.  Path as a frame. How path becomes place and might hold and give meaning to what happens. Change it even. Path as pattern, simple as one step in front of another, maybe the result of a simple plan, and then how a shift in pattern, intended or not, might change it's form, how we might even see it as a mistake. And alliance, how something so different might fit by considering which parts lean into one another. Together how path is, again, a puzzle. 

These considerings are useful to me. For story, for form, to connect my life with my making. The question today, for me, is do you understand? Do I need you to understand.  Do you need to understand?  Is it possible to understand? Does it matter?  What's the use? Which will ultimately lead to... do I need to be here? These questions are for me, not you. Here, because Instagram is not the place for them. And I am afforded the luxury (privilege) to consider them. 

A seed

Usefulness has so much to do with timing.

I made this small component to demonstrate process for the big one. But I am not sure how useful that is anymore. I am thinking a lot about timing. And my own usefulness. What an elusive puzzle. It become clearer with age.

We seem to be in the path of the storm sliding up the east coast.  . The base of the road in is in danger of washing out.  Gonna shut down and go move some large rocks.

Small Cloth meets Large Cloth

It was a long day, not doing anything I like doing.

And finally as we approach sunset and it is quiet here once again, this is what I accomplished.

The green cross cloth, from back here. I put the green wish there. Somehow it made me feel useful.

Probably everyone has lost track of my large cloth adventures by now. I have. I don't mind tho, I will get to them.

The guys couldn't finish today. They will be back at 8 am tomorrow morning.

Just Here

I am here.

Just building a path.

To what?

To what's next, I guess.

72 aka Path.

The colors look funny here but hey...

things are not always as they seem. 

Maybe we might even rest in that for a while.

The Big Round Table

A dining table, was the idea. Dining table. We don't need to dine there. No visitors. Won't be. And then in the back of my mind, a place to gather, a workshop. Not gonna happen either.  But it's big, and flat and easy to get around with a seemingly never ending edge. So it is the cloth table. In this year of Big Cloth. And this, this is the other side of Holding Pattern. From a while back. I was talking about it a lot then. And then, like most things, poof. (older posts about this cloth)

It has become bigger. It's for the Boy, an old promise. I did stitch those border pieces by hand. No machine here. 

It's real hard to show or tell you what I am doing, because Typepad is not letting me post media at the moment.

It has actually become a chore to try to post, one problem after another. But like big cloth, you keep at it.

I am simply coating the other side with very thin cloth basted in place (I call this a catch layer, I need to talk to explain that, maybe tomorrow?) and then adding a layer of plant dyed silk, patch my patch, Boro style, no pattern except the one that emerges from how it happens in the holding together. The center has already been quilted through from the front. But I am not getting too far with the edge, because clown cat here has become increasingly playful, spending more and more time at my side since his encounter with The Fox. 

I can say this once a week posting is not working for me. It is putting distance between me and you and diminishing my ability and then even the desire to explain. I have been thinking a lot about habit and process. And how it is that things remain the same. Part of my new thinking path has me stepping back to look at myself and my going, trying to see it in perspective, what and why it is like it is.. Noticing how my needs have changed. Not just cloth but Just Living. Knowing more clearly that this place is not the other place and laughing at my early attempts to make it so. In this last week I have undone all I did in terms of arranging, simplified and even gave stuff away.  I carried too much stuff here and I don't need it. Or even want it. Perhaps it made me feel secure during the process. I have only just "arrived" here it seems. I see it as just new space with a Big Round Table. And blankets. And beasts.

 

Just Quilting

This part, the quilting. Needle Chanting.

I am quilting a Nest Of Days.

My favorite part is the hardest for me these days.  Older with thumb joint issues. Slower than ever. But then, it is the forever part that holds me in the safest place.

The basic quilting style I began with. Just going, along the seams. Simple. With squares, reinforcing the grid. I am back there, in simpler times. Hoping to finish another blanket before winter. 

The quilting will be done using what is left in the thread nest from a year of working. No worry about color. Just thread to hold it together. Mostly I use 2 strands of floss. No hoop.  I will quilt what is here and then make the whole thing bigger by adding around the edge. A cloth can always become bigger. Even if it is already bound. I am not sure I have ever composed that thought as I have this morning.

A baby quilt might just be the gift of beginning, it could grow with you. Imagine it as a nest of days, adding a ring each year as needed, so it remained big enough to hold you.

Context

Out flat , on the round glass table for stitching down.  Tabled I usually say. Almost all stitched down actually. Not perfect but that's the idea. Just stitched down. Holding.
Actually, not a bad TableCloth.

It's a blanket though.

Note to self, it could be both, why not?

A Table Blanket.

and just to say...

 

Link to video if you see no player

Hunker Down for real

Another circle of green, then OK, a Pool of Green.

A Pool of Green for no reason.

So. Just because. Just because I had a lot of green silk.

How things really go, let's count the ways today.

The video is cut off at the beginning, I said I'm sorry about the shadow, but actually not really sorry. I just thought I should say that. It dragged on a bit, way too much, and I was a bit out of the ring of vision. But too lazy to edit. The washer was running. The man began asking me questions as he was trying to fix the hinge on my computer, which, we know at this point cannot be fixed. The house is small and it's hard to get away from each other. The sound carries. It was raining and so that was that.  A pool of green seemed a way to escape. AND So again, the goal here, has to become not to present a soft edged fairy-tale in slo-mo with a soundtrack as if everything is perfectly aligned (which I, like all other creatives might consider convincing and valuable, some more than others),but to show and tell how it goes. I am not sure we learn that much from the "hollywood" effect anyway. I guess we are entertained and can rest there.  But we are more likely to aspire to what cannot be. Or just isn't.  Which makes us into followers. Which seems the goal of the century. And all that might come with that.

I am not being negative. Someone asked a question this week. What are you learning about yourself through all this? I think I feel a bit confused about the effects. The changes. Except the part about me that is becoming increasingly impatient with bullshit. Especially my own. I think more deeply and then make a note to myself... getting older makes bullshit less and less useful. Probably because there's not enough time for it.

Link to video if you see no player below.

And then after watching this again, another note to self...another self perhaps. From another perspective...we all have enough of reality anyway so why not seek out the fairy-tale?  Who needs to watch this?  I could have just said I drew a circle and scrunched some silk into it and now it looks like a pool of green. I like it. And that's enough. Then I might take a picture of myself running through the forest wearing this as a cape. I might enjoy that I suppose and and you too.

Life is hilariously confusing.

The rain stopped and the squirrels dug up all the seedlings in the raised beds on the porch. I'll not worry too much about gardening to eat this year. Whatever grows grows. I doubt the fencing will go up this season. Money will be spent on chimney repair first, which looks like a big job. And there are certainly enough wild greens to eat. I will perhaps concentrate on composting and caring for and pruning what's here. Especially that pear tree. Maybe plant a few small fruit trees. Sow some wildflowers. Buy from and support local food growers. 

Just now the resident red fox hopped over the stone wall and ran under the porch and down into the woods below. I see her every morning. She reminds me of Just Going.

The Road to Hunkersville

Here we are in May but really, it's almost June. Imagine that. 

The road in now. Or out, from here. We need to trim the branches on the right, the small pear tree is getting too much shade. We've a mix of Maple, Elm and Oak here. Heavier on the Maple. Haven't spotted any Walnut yet.
It's going to rain lightly all day. 

I  covered the foundation, didn't take long really, and then just light basting. Enough for now. If I didn't want to take it further or didn't have the time...a backing, a little quilting and an edge and poof, a baby would have a blanket. Right? It is very close to UseFull. Gift-able.

Or if Mommy, or Daddy(why not?) were stitchers, they might continue. Right? Probably they would be too busy, but hey. The quilt as a base. It can be that. Became that to me anyway. That is how it started.

Baffled once again, because that pile of green seems unstoppable, are there elves leaving cloth in the still of the night? I am going to make another green quilt base. Try another way. There are so many.

Unplugging now, some quieter time. Outside in the light rain, planting. 

Comments off today, let's take a break.