windthread

just looking

these are the ones on the table...can see them more clearly here.  they are my favorites and really only two are finished.  and mostly from Spirit Cloth work...the first workshop.

to clarify...these won't go on this big cloth.  i just wanted to look at what i'd done...look for continuity in Theme?   my guess is that the big cloth will have some similarities but be more complex.  it also won't be woven.  or, maybe parts might be, but not woven like jenny's Daughter cloth.    and back to nance's thought about a center...i think the center might move as it goes??? that it might be just many moments in time?  i really love thinking about it.

here are the pots:

the cast iron...rusty...is where it began....just water and onion skins.  uncovered, it  evaporates pretty quickly.  once, last summer, i let it completely dry out and got some beautiful forms that actually were black, come to think about it.  Helen, you have a little piece of that.  it's also the largest piece on the "Clothesline" cloth above.  i hadn't thought about that until i am typing this in this moment.  funny how it goes.

anyway...in the cast iron pot for a couple days till a good "green" is achieved, then all goes into the copper pot.  water added if necessary.  then i hung them to dry in Sun.  last step was to swish in the Colorhue black.  today is day 2 in the cast iron....drama.  the jar has geranium dead heads from  Alz.B's front walkway yesterday.   i'll stick some cloth in there today and see what happens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

transition, one Point to another...or is it the same?

Hot has arrived.  and the swamp cooler isn't wanting to work so the computer which is i guess a cousin of the swamp cooler is making that odd buzzing sound it does just before it just goes blank and shuts down.  this limits my time here to early hours.

i am still very much content withing the Sun Moon and Stars Whispering.  i have not had enough yet of watching and listening, thinking, imagining.  so still being so much there, i wander in to the possibilities of Whispering Magic.   A Large Cloth.  one that might take forever.  i like the image of that...me, sitting different places, different times,  ... adding something,  mending something else.

one of the thoughts that has come is that there is a consistency of a ground color of Jude's Magic.  Indigo.             

beautiful and magnificant Indigo.   

but i don't have so much Indigo...only small pieces.  so what will i use as the consistent cloth that lies itself down to receive all that will come?   what i DO have is a LOT of muslin, all kinds and so while i am thinking about all this, i began stitching together some 9 patches of tea dyed.  the intense sensual pleasure for me of stitching muslin is a good sign.  and then,  on a whim, i took one out and put it in the cast iron pot with onion skins.  after a day/night/day, it was a deep and interesting greenish color.  into the copper pot...all of it; cloth, sludge.  another day night a different shade.  but i'm thinking, black.  how can i make black.   the little bottle of  ColorHue from Glennis' class so long ago.  float the greenish 9 patch, swish, float and here we have it

 

the dark one.  the color isn't quite true.  but i like it.  a lot.  the piece to the right is a tea dye that i just floated in the left over ColorHue water.  a lighter variation and i like that a lot too.  the one at the bottom is a piece of linen/cotton that took the very last of the dye and is beautiful sky cloth with clouds.  i think i can repeat this dye process enough to create a good amount of muslin to begin this Large Cloth.  and then, i found all the most loved pieces that i have learned with since the beginning of It All....put them together with this dyed muslin and yes. 

it feels good.

In Sun Moon and Stars, Jude's latest post is about Theme.  how will i think about this???  especially in terms of the beginning of this cloth?  but then, in general too.   and i realize that it's already there, has always been, really.  when i was i think 4 years old, my mother took me to the Museum of Natural History in Detroit.  i would have to be 4 because we moved from Detroit when i was 5.  i saw something there that became the leit motif of Me and how i see myself in this life.  over time i have tried to replicate what i saw in different ways, but there is a consistent bottom line, a Humm that has remained the same.  it's the image of Diorama, the small illuminated still moment of something happening.  small doings in the lives of human beings within the larger context of humanity as a whole.  within the larger context of their Place on the planet. within the larger context of Sun Moon and Stars.  within the larger still context of the Universe.  and too, within the small personal context of self.  in this case, one woman's life. 

so...i have gotten to some place with the cloth making.  i feel a shift.  i learned things i don't know really from making the Daughter Cloth.  and as i continue now, with small cloths and with the beginning of Whispering Magic                                                                                                                                           it's the image of the Diorama that i think of as Theme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the time being

this is a very good day.   Enough has been done.

the top edge has been stitched under.  the other three edges are ok as is for the time being.  the skipping goat is all secured.    nothing will come loose.

so it began with Spirit Cloth,  with the burning desire to understand the meaning in my own life of those two words ~ went on into Patchwork Beasts with the appearance of the little goat ~ then  into Cloth to Cloth  where the Daughter Cloth came into being as the holder of dreams. 

and i want to say here again, that the large cloth is from strips and strips and strips torn from unwanted scraps of "good household cloth" as Jude called it, from our local thrift shop in combination with the central motif that my daughter lingered over at the big thrift shop in Albuquerque.  the back, which will be may be the middle some time is a very used but strong flannel blanket.  all tea dyed  and what is the very very greatest thing to me,   sewn by hand.                    cloth unto cloth unto cloth.      one of these days when i am in the same place as she is again,  i will take it on in to Contemporary Woven Boro.  mosaic weaving,  stitching.  i look forward to that day.   for now, i learn in Sun Moon and Stars Whispering and will practice these things, both to finish off the edges of the SUN's rays and also for those stars,  those  beautiful little boro stars........

so, here we have it.   the little scrap of onionskin dye near the sun rays, i almost forgot.  will be stitched in to a ray.  she will recognize it as frog eggs where we are going and Spadefoot Toad eggs from where we've been.  needs to be there.

thanks for everyone's endurance with this    xoxoxo 

 

luck and whimsy?

so...a decision.   in a gesture toward luck and whimsy, i made a rainbow path.  am totally ambivalent about it....         i like that it indicates a wish for luck,  a  journey to somewhere over the rainbow.    so i like the thoughts,  but i am not at all sure about the reality of it on the cloth.

i remember some point in the Beasts Workshop when the word whimsical came up.    i love very much whimsical elements in other people's work, but remember saying that i am not much for whimsy in my own.   so i think about this.   Why not?, i am wondering.  what's my deal about whimsy?   and since this is such a personally referenced cloth (that i probably should say is the center of the Daughter Cloth)   is this the place to deal with Whimsy?    maybe it is.........

so the little goat needs a tail and then there are some more stitches for the sewing down of the right and left brown mountains in the top part.  a few more stems of grass. 

there was a temptation to refine the goat some, but i ended up liking her so much as is...just the most basic shapes to indicate goatness and the funny little legs that were just selvage scraps that were sitting on the table...somehow i really like that a lot at the time and like it still, months later.

so...need to make this decision sometime today.  this cloth needs to be stitched on to the Large cloth this weekend. 

 

 

 

 

moody

i surprised self today by feeling             moody.  i don't often have             moods         much anymore.  i hadn't really realized that.     

but, from this, came this:

and because of the moodiness,  i am going to tell myself a kind of story......that maybe fragments of old rainbows get caught in fragments of old stars.  or vice versa.  or maybe they are just fragments that have yet to determine their purpose.  or maybe just pieces of fragments that will at some point gather to become a new star or a new rainbow?  or, maybe just a way for me to comfort myself from being surprised by     a mood.

at any rate,  today's post in Jude's  Sun Moon and Stars 
 

where you're from to where you are going

 

home from the BubbleMachine

just finished going around all of it, snipping off loosened threads.

NOTHING came loose.  nothing frayed into oblivion.    just as Jude said somewhere, long ago,  the threads loosen to a point and then if anything, merge even more into the single Cloth.   it is strong.

 

in obedience to the Law of You Never Know

i am taking pics of Arlee's Leaf Moon and the tulips before they go into the machine at the laundromat.  they are just barely stitched down and i want to find out how their edges fray.

 
 

 

a more sobering view

had to bring inside this morning....Crazy Wind is back.    so, back to where it all began, on the ceiling beam.    and it goes from elation of yesterday to     uh,   well......  kind of  Hmmmm.

will work on the little goat....    tomorrow will take to laundromat and wash.  3 long months of blown in sand and 3 long months of cat .    then, just looking for as long as it takes.  for sure, the tulips and Arlee's Leaf Moon will remain.   otherwise, i just don't know.  i realized as i was stitching down that central big piece, that a lot depends on what it wants to "say".   and what i want jenny to hear when she looks at it....over time.  and right now, i don't know.   there is a sense tho that she might be setting out soon.  once it's washed and the little goat in place tho, she can take it.  to use Jude's criteria, it does hold together as cloth.  and i can work on it more when i finally get there???

i think she needs to be moved a little to the left edge  and am thinking about a wandering road to the sunrise. 

 

 

 

 

 

real quick, before it rains.......

look what has finally,  f i n a l l y,  happened!!!!!!!!!!!

all the stitching , the basic invisible baste, is now complete!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  it is ONE CLOTH.  just want to put it here to convince myself it is really true.   i will come back later and write more.  this is just such a glorious moment.