stitch: waiting

i bought one of kaye turner's lovely pieces a couple of weeks ago and it arrived early last week, but with the dreary weather, i never felt the light was right for properly photographing it. it's a piece that kaye made last winter and she called it waiting. and at the point where she was making it, i was also waiting. waiting for my new job to begin, waiting to see what kind of a farm we would find, waiting for our house to sell (still waiting for that, tho' there is a glimmer of hope at the moment)....waiting and waiting and waiting. and so when i saw the piece on her big cartel site, i snatched it up. i'd been wanting one of her pieces and this one just felt like the perfect one for me.

i've been fascinated by the so-called slow cloth movement and i wrote last winter a few times about the slow cloth facebook group, which i felt both strangely compelled and repelled by - because it seemed like it was an awfully hard group to break into and be welcomed. especially if you, like me, are rather into contemporary fabrics and have a great deal of affection for your sewing machine. you'll be glad to know i've largely stopped checking out what's going on in the group gotten a life and moved on. but i'm grateful to the group because i think it's how i met kaye (who is really named karen). i've been reading her blog and she mine and she's a flickr contact as well. and i love the insight that gives into her process and her art.

i'm showing you bits and pieces of the piece because the detail is what drew me to it. there's a house. there's a compelling and rather map-like symbol that may have eyes on it and a nordic sun symbol. the tones are muted and fit that march period in which it was made. there are some vibrant orange and burgundy threads in it, adding splashes of color, but for the most part, it's quite neutral in tone.

earlier this year, i bought a beautiful stitched piece by jude hill, who may be the very soul of the slow cloth movement. that little cloth, with its flying trees, is magical. but karen's piece is magical in another way. while i feel privileged to own one of jude's works, this piece by karen feels more like it was meant to be mine. like it was made for me and has now found its way home to me. karen is also waiting to sell her house and move, so in a way, we had parallel story lines at the time it was made.

the piece holds up well to scrutiny and the more i look at it, the more meaning and symbolism i see in it that i feel applies so much to me and my life. the little colorful bed of X-es makes me think of the garden we've begun here at the new house. and my eye is drawn back again and again to the map-like circle, with its different landscapes and that peninsula in the center. i love the luminous little stretch of brilliant red.

when you pull back from the map-like circle, it resembles a head as it has a neck and "body" below - and the shape of that body reminds me of the driftwood people that husband and i have made. it seems to be peeking in from the side in a way, as if popping in from the future to reassure that what's ahead is colorful, since that side of the piece has the most color. the nordic sun symbol within a square is something my father-in-law would have appreciated, so it makes me think of him. there's just so much here. and i'm sure it all meant something else to karen, but it's just so dense with meaning for me. i just can't escape the feeling that it was meant to be mine. there are details that i don't know yet what they mean, but i feel certain it will become clear to me as time goes on.

i'm getting quite a few stitched pieces now - sophie callaghan's beautiful petra doll (thanks spud!), my beautiful stitched pillow from elizabeth. my own breakthrough eye pillow that resides on our bed. i'm not sure yet how i want to display karen's piece. with the house half falling down, i think a proper place for it will have to wait, which is probably just fine in light of its name...waiting.

stitched up: what does quilting mean?

last week, i happened to go to jude hill's big cartel site at exactly the right time to be able to, at long last, buy one of her beautiful spirit cloth creations. and it arrived already yesterday. it must have taken the first flight it could, because it seemed to get here very quickly. i think it knew how much i was looking forward to it.i've mentioned jude's spirit cloth blog and photostream before, because i have been drawn back to her work again and again for awhile now. i love the insight into her process that she shares on her blog - it's definitely magical.

as i sit here and write this, with the cloth here on my lap, i feel it radiating a quiet magic. i've had a half-written post on the topic of this quilting thing in my head for several days now, but it didn't really want to come out. now that the cloth is here, it seems the words are ready to come.

i joined jude's slow cloth group on facebook last week. there is a lively discussion going on there, but i'll admit that i ended up feeling very provoked by what was being said. especially by what was being said about contemporary quilters and quilting materials. there seemed to be a preference for old fabrics over new and hand stitching instead of sewing with a machine. a decided prejudice against what's marketed and an attitude towards quilt shows and popularizing quilt designers (tho' no one dared to name names) that i can only describe as haughty. i found myself feeling strangely angry about some of what i read (i must stress that it isn't everyone in the group or even everyone in the discussion - and jude is marvelous at redirecting the conversation onto a thoughtful and more productive track). but some of it seemed arrogant and elitist. there is actually one person who said they couldn't stand the rotary cutters many people use for cutting fabric. and another who was criticizing what people did with their quilts and how they hung them - as if they weren't their own to do with as they pleased. i was overwhelmed by a sense of irony that the conversation is taking place on facebook - the use of modern social networking to have a conversation about a return to traditional handmade quilting. hmmm....

one of the participants in the discussion, linked to this blog post about what quilting is today and what it once was (in this person's opinion). and i think the post sums up nicely the anti-commercial thread that's in evidence in the facebook group.  also ironic, because if you start to look at the blogs of the participants, you find that most have an etsy or big cartel site and some even sell through galleries, so they are, in fact, selling their work, even as they express disdain for those who do so. i'm not sure if i can make that fit together very well.

and while it would be wonderful if we could all sit in our cocoons and create to our hearts' content, the reality of the world in which we find ourselves is that we probably need to sell some of the things we make. selling not only supports our creative habits, but it also validates us if we're honest about it. and it brings us joy. i feel so happy and satisfied that my friend blanca wanted to give baby quilts that i made to some of the babies in her family for christmas. and while the financial side is nice, what's actually even nicer is that my friend liked my work enough to want to give it as a meaningful gift to someone she loves.

anyway, i guess i have this quilting thing and what it might all mean on my mind these days. on my mind as i contemplate cutting into sabin's baby's clothes to be able to make her a memory quilt of her life thus far. on my mind as i made blocks for christmas for husband's daughters to have memory quilts of their own--of our travels and our times spent together. on my mind as i contemplate the wonderful handmade quilt husband's mother made for him--a mixture of blocks he designed and traditional blocks. on my mind as i try to decide what to do with the beautiful, bright quilt top that my great grandmother made.

i'm finding it a bit surprising, the strong emotions i feel about this whole thing. there is something about stitching. something that feels connected and grounding. but i honestly have no objection to using new fabrics, just because they're popular. when i look at the quilt top that my great grandmother made, i see bright, cheerful fabrics that i'm sure were the popular ones of her era. so to use the new and beautiful fabrics i see out there seems to me to be quilting in her spirit, even if i do most of my sewing my machine and am quite attached to my rotary cutter.

i think one of the magical things about quilts is that they are very representative of their times. they are quite literally the very fabric of their time. and i don't see anything wrong with that. as i look through the book about swedish quilts that i found a few months ago, i see that the same was true then. so, i'm going to hang out in the slow cloth group and see what i can learn, because there are some real artists there, even if some of the group is a bit elitist and disdainful (despite a lot of talk about mentoring). i'm confident i can hold my own. and find my own stitching voice. but i do think that having an incredible piece like jude's story fragment beside me as i do it will help. thank you jude, for giving in a bit to the commercial side and sharing your beautiful work. i will take good care of it.

sew and sew

i'm on a roll. i started another quilt today - as we "speak" (11:05 p.m.), the blocks are all finished and just need to be laid out and sewn together tomorrow. i remember when i was a kid, my mom always said she had to be inspired to sew and i'm finding that i know exactly what she meant. i'm definitely inspired at the moment. and while i'm sewing, so many ideas come to me, i had to grab a notebook to scribble them down. i don't know if it's the new year or being free of the soul-crushing job or the winter light or what, but whatever it is, i'm running with it.

so funny, all that angst i had last year at this time over the whole slow cloth thing. it turns out that while i love other people's slow cloth work, i'm more of a fast cloth kind of girl myself. i get kind of a high from seeing quick results. and definitely a sense of accomplishment being able to make something beautiful come together very quickly. it appeals to my aries sensibility, i guess. and it feels GOOD to finish something and move directly on to the next something - i feel it feeding my inspiration. i'm still following a pattern from malka dubrawsky's wonderful new fresh quilting book on this second quilt, but i can also begin to see glimmers of my own ideas bubbling up...i'll soon be forging off on my own, without a pattern.

here's hoping you're feeling in flow, whatever you're doing this coming weekend.

everything has to begin somewhere

slow cloth. soul food. spirit cloth. of late, i'm drawn to the notion of art journaling in fiber. i love to sew and quilt and create things with fabric and fibers. but sometimes, before a beautiful piece of material, i find myself paralyzed, unable to cut into it, afraid i won't do it justice. but a week or so ago, i did a bit of doodling in my art planning journal (as opposed to my art journal, which is something else, as is my journal journal, but i digress). i planned a mini-quilt that will be an art journal of sorts of where i am right now. taking off on the fabulous stacey's writing is the new praying which has become my new life philosophy.

and yesterday, when i was feeling moody blue and despairing of ever being able to produce anything even close to as creative and thoughtful as the women of the links above, i decided it was time to get brave and move from scribbles in a journal to cloth. so i took a large piece of cream linen and made it into a large 9-patch to give myself 9 squares in which to work. i could have left the fabric whole but it felt right to cut it and sew it back together to define the squares.  i haven't yet delved into the meaning of those defined squares, as at the moment, i'm making an effort to operate on instinct and not analyze too much.

the one that felt right to begin with was a velvety turquoise heart, which i embroidered onto the linen with a beautiful yarn that moves through the colors of the rainbow, or at least the colors of my rainbow, which involve lots of shades of turquoise and green and eventually reds and oranges. as i began to sew it on, thinking of how the blue heart had something to do with love being the cornerstone of my world and it being blue symbolized husband, i realized that the black strand twisted with the blue also had some echo of husband in that it was both masculine and somehow reflected his salt and pepper hair (ok, i realize, i'm over-analyzing here and i promised i wouldn't, but as i was stitching, these were the thoughts that popped into my head and i wanted to record them).

it's interesting how reaching for certain fabrics and fibers on instinct, by listening to something deeper, brings thoughts you didn't know were there to the surface. and what i think i get from the women i linked to above is that the process is really the important part. that it's what gets you in touch with something deeper, something you didn't consciously know was there. so, while the 9 things i want to work onto this cloth came to me very quickly, i think that their meanings will reveal themselves to me only as i work on them.

i can feel myself (at last) assimilating the inspiration i've found in elizabeth's thoughtful soul food embroideries and jude hill's rather dark, but intricate layered cloths. i can tell already that my result will be more more me - maybe in that it will be a more vibrant turquoise, less muted and perhaps a bit messy rather than simple and clean. when i started out, i feared that i wouldn't be able to make it my own. that i didn't really know what to do with the inspiration i found myself drawn back to again and again, but that fear is leaving me. all it really takes is to begin.

what will you begin this weekend?

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note to those who were interested: the recipe for those preserved veggies is up on domestic sensualist!

how can i find myself if i wasn't lost?

"you can find yourself, sometimes,  in the things that make you most uncomfortable," i read this morning on jude hills' spirit cloth blog. she was talking about winter, but the comment resonated with me. i think because of my ongoing inner difficulties with the slow cloth facebook group. the arrogance evident in the group continues to get to me. i week or so ago i started a discussion thread, asking people to introduce themselves, so we'd know who we were in dialogue with. a few people have, but none of the founders or "big names" in the group have, giving me the impression that they are disdainful of the little people like me. i realize this is a reflection of my own feelings and it's probably more that they haven't noticed or don't care to introduce themselves, thinking they're famous enough that they don't need to. but for some strange reason i let it bother me. and equally strangely, i continue to stay in the group, to see what conversation is taking place, despite how it makes me feel. perhaps i'm trying, as jude says, to find myself in that which makes me most uncomfortable.

sparkling in the blogosphere

i've thought about my recent blogosphere run-ins a bit more and what i think is behind them, in both cases, is actually a message to me that i wasn't welcome in those particular bloggy circles. because there are bloggy circles out here. and while i've tried very hard to have my own bloggy circle be a wide and inclusive one, not everyone feels that way. and while i undoubtedly don't always succeed, i think that save one instance with the flickr group where someone was just downright nasty to other members, i have never intentionally excluded anyone from my little corner of the blogosphere.

there's a particular gang on flickr that i honestly tried to be part of (the wanna-be 3191s, as i think of them (note: the REAL 3191 people are not part of that group and i am most definitely not implicating them)) and i was just thoroughly and roundly rejected. the whole tumblr photo thing was with a member of that circle and it was just, at the base of it, another message to me that i wasn't part of their gang. so i've long given up. as i realized i didn't need the validation of a few stuck-up snobs in order to feel ok with myself and my photos and well, my life. there's way more validation and warmth and life to be had in my own bloggy/flickr circles.

i think the other one was signaling that i don't really belong in another of the crafty circles. my experiments in natural dyeing are sporatic at best, as are my stitching efforts. i love contemporary fabrics. i don't fit. i'm not one of them (i felt that last winter with the slow cloth group on facebook) and that's ok with me too. while i thought it was only a compliment to link to the beautiful and inspiring things that people are sharing online, apparently you should only do that if you're of them.

jenna wrote recently of being a jack of all trades and proud of it. i guess that's a bit where i'm at too...of late, my interest has been in sewing clothes for sabin. i've also been knitting a bit here and there. my cooking interests are subdued at the moment by my horrible old kitchen, but they will return as well. and i will go back to the stitching and i'm still following many inspiring blogs, but i guess i have to be content with my place in the scheme of things. and actually, i am. it is just jarring to be told outright that you don't belong.

but that's not how i want to be and the only thing i can change is my own view on these things and know that in both instances, my intentions were good, and that's really all i can say.

a big thank you to everyone for your supportive comments and the reminder that things aren't all awry in the blogosphere. i have put up a small blogroll once again, but this time, it's a link up under my header. i will be changing it regularly and keeping it small, so if you're worried that you're not there at the moment, you just might be the next time you look.

happy weekend one and all...

the wrong stitches?

a fascinating aspect of the experience of sharing my great grandmother's quilts in an exhibition at my beloved little museum is the conversations with those who stop by. many of those conversations are magical, as i point out details on the quilts - like the light circle in the middle of this photo that has a dark circle of fabric on it, where my great grandmother sewed together a small piece of fabric to make up the circle - ensuring that nothing went to waste. or the fact that many of these fabrics were actually flour sacks that came in colorful calicos. here in denmark, people are a little incredulous at that, as apparently they only came in white or natural fabric here. 

a number of people i talked to, including the other person whose quilts are part of the exhibition, have expressed some surprising things. multiple people have said that we are showing the wrong side of the yoyo quilt above. we are most definitely not, as i know which side my grandmother considered the top side - and it's as it is above. the way that people tell me this is quite condescending, as if i'm a small, dull child who doesn't know back from front. and yet, this is the beautiful side of the yoyo quilt. 

the other surprising thing is how judgy people can be. there are four of these unfinished quilt tops that are perfect little 2x2-ish squares. they are completely hand sewn and they are the ones my mother remembers helping sew. her grandmother had had a stroke and couldn't get around, so she sat in her bed with piles of squares around her and sewed them together. and now, 80 years later, some danish ladies who otherwise know their handicrafts, inform me that she sewed them together wrong. they look utterly perfect to me, but her method was apparently a different one than the one they know, and so they characterize it as wrong, rather than being interested in a different technique. and it rather amazes me how much they seem to want to tell me this.

and it has me thinking about the slow stitch movement i followed back in the old bloggy days. they were that way too - very judgemental and condemning of those who did things differently than them. i wonder where the need to do that arises? why not just be fascinated by the way my great grandmother did it? why the need to judge it and deem it incorrect? why can't we embrace the amazing world of handiwork and appreciate the stories that we stitch into the cloth? why not be in awe of a woman who had had a stroke, but who could sit in her bed and stitch together small squares into perfect patterns. i know i couldn't do it. i love making quilts, but i need to lay them out and look at them and move the squares around and walk away and come back and move them around some more before sewing them together with my sewing machine. i am in awe of what she could do. and while i am interested in how she sewed it together, i don't think it could possibly be the wrong. after all these quilts and quilt tops are all still here after nearly 100 years, so she must have done something right.

 

just another friday evening in the ER

late this afternoon, as i was pushing a wheelbarrow of bunny poo across the garden, husband came out and said, "wife, i think i need some help." he was very calm and so i didn't really think so much of it. then i realized he was holding his hand. he calmly said he needed some stitches and that we should probably go the ER. and i totally freaked out!! as one does.

he had a small piece of toilet paper wrapped around the thumb (which i most decidedly did NOT want to look at) and so in a flustered (to say the least) state, i ran and grabbed him a proper cloth to put around it. he strangely took off his shoes in the hallway and then he sort of swooned from the pain on the floor. i went into total panic then. i asked him if i should call an ambulance (i still hadn't seen the thumb). i'd not seen him so white and i was really worried.

he said, no, just find my wallet with my medical card in it and let's drive to the ER. we have a hospital locally, but it has no ER, so we had to drive 30 miles. behind a variety of slow combines, tractors, lorries filled with pigs and lost people from the netherlands pulling their caravans (and i've oddly gone british in my vocabulary). it seemed like the longest 30 minutes of my life.

when we'd barely gone 2 km from home, husband had some strange shock reaction (it's pretty intense to saw into your thumb with a band saw) - his eyes rolled back into his head, and he breathed very strangely and was white as a ghost. he recovered quickly and didn't seem to be aware it had even happened. that pretty much freaked me out.

we arrived at the ER (p.s. vejle - you need more signs directing people to your hospital), parked right outside (thank you for that, vejle hospital!) and went in. husband was seen immediately - a nurse ushered him in, asking me if i wanted to come in too (i said definitely not, please direct me to the waiting room). you see, i really can't stand the sight of things that are bleeding. it makes me feel faint.

so i settled into the waiting room with my P.D. james (which may explain the brit vocab above). i was totally impressed with how quickly husband's details were taken and he was seen by a doctor. we're talking within less than ten minutes of arrival.

i was sitting in the waiting room when i was approached by a doctor, asking, in danish, if i was swedish. in one of those moments where your brain tries to make sense of a situation by running through all the likely scenarios on fast forward, i concluded that husband, who spent his first five years in sweden and is half swedish, had had some kind of horrible shock fit, reverted to swedish and they were coming out to tell me that they'd lost him in some kind of freak stitching accident.

thankfully, that was not true and he came out, thumb bandaged, told me he only had two stitches and that he would like to go home now and eat our leftover pizza. but could we first stop and get him some chocolate and some cider.

and that was the beginning of our weekend. i hope the rest of it is a little bit more boring.