Monthly Archives: August 2014

summer passing

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Wow, the season can really slide by. Today? I am going to go swimming! Have to. Have to.

a beautiful surprise

a beautiful surprise

It’s been a quiet week.  By that, I mean fairly unscheduled (there were nine yard crews and a morning of limb removal on our street).  The light and air were pretty the day I took two of the Star Maps outside.
IMG_9980 IMG_9981 IMG_9989 IMG_9992 I had time to weed, clean, visit my sister, get our rugs cleaned.  Boxed up the old tape players from the Perkins Library to return them.

end of an era

end of an era

Both of my boys qualified for audio books and machines from the Braille and Talking Book Library.  What a great service that has been! Tapes delivered to your door, free postage to return, a large library to choose from.  With my older son, in particular, it made a huge difference.  Some months in middle school, he listened to six or seven books on tape, which meant that he entered high school more literate than some of his better-reading peers.
IMG_4586Me? I am slogging through the excellent novel, “Cloudsplitter” — by Russell Banks.  I don’t really recommend reading THREE 800 pages novels in a year (“Our Mutual Friend” by Charles Dickens and “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt, being the other two).  To get through this one (even though it’s SUPERB), I had to take breaks to read six shorter novels and Stephen King’s wonderful, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft“.

Earlier in the year, I read another historic novel about the radical abolitionist, John Brown:  “The Good Lord Bird” by James McBride. Have learned a lot about Kansas and Missouri and how the battle about slavery played out there in the years leading up to the Civil War.

 

how purpose matters

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The decision to give The Crow to Wendy  Golden-Levitt to share with traumatized children as part of their therapy (see yesterday’s post), not only inspired subsequent design choices, it gave energy to completion. Like the commissioned quilt, I wanted there to be very soft textures (this one: angora knit, silk wings, satin woven sections, velvet backing). After mounting the rectangle to a jacket, with visions of children running with the crow on their backs, I cut it away, because it wouldn’t fit the little ones, and anyway, three feet of streaming ribbon could possibly problematic.  The captions tell the rest.

damp stretching knit onto felt

damp stretching knit onto felt

defining wing area

defining wing area

rejected bead eye, used button; added silk for wings and belly, felt for feet

rejected bead eye, used button; added silk for wings and belly, felt for feet

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split running stitch to better define beak; a strip of my mother’s wool challis scarf to get her in there

stitched to velvet jacket, then cut away, leaving lots of velvet still; added runners of lace and satin

stitched to velvet jacket, then cut away, leaving velvet edges; added runners of lace and satin

vision of child wearing crow and streaming tails changed to something that could sit in their lap, not get caught on anything; size shouldn't matter

vision of child wearing crow and streaming tails changed to something that could sit in their lap, not get caught on anything; size shouldn’t matter

returning to 'treasure map' idea, this time with star map and red X's marking the spot

returning to ‘treasure map’ idea, this time with star map and red X’s marking the spot

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IMG_9895 crow communing with birds; tapering rectangle shows need of additional cloth

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kept little blue tab on side — it looks to me like a way out or a way in

added soft polka dot panels to even lower edges

added soft polka dot panels to even lower edges

ready to fly away!

ready to fly away!

Crow flew to Canada

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IMG_0014As many of you know, awhile back I was commissioned to make a quilt for Wendy Golden-Levitt, a Jungian therapist in Canada who uses cloth in her work with children.

IMG_9154Wendy sent the fiber artists whose work she employs a beautiful book as a thank you.  It is filled with the most moving testimony from the children, including wonderfully wise and curious speculations about the cloth makers.

Here are just a few gems:

“I am getting better working with the cloths. I can feel the people who made them. I think they understand what it is like to wait…”

“You step towards it [the cloth] and it whispers something. By the time you are holding it, you got a real relationship going. You can trust it completely.”

“Were they sad or stitching themselves into serious happiness? Do they have days when they are not feeling good in the heart? Do they listen to their dogs or cats? Do they eat waffles while they are sewing?”

I was so moved to see a young woman using “my” quilt as a prayer rug.

(and, by the way, check out how completely color-coordinate she is with the quilt — right down to her fingernails!!)

I blogged about genesis of the idea of a “Treasure Island” theme here and about it being in progress here, but apparently never blogged about its completion. So here are some pix.
foldableHouse-SanctuaryReady-for-lovingTREASURE-ISLAND-wholeFabric depicting a treasure map got me going with the idea of healing being like a sailor looking for gold.  I wanted there to be lots of animals in the cloth, too — both as guides to the children, and as characters in whatever stories they were busy telling. I bound it with ‘baby-blanket satin’ to make it as touchable and inviting as possible.

Receiving the book was so moving, that it inspired me to send another piece — that Crow I’d been working on.  I’ve heard from Wendy and the Crow has landed!!

IMG_3839 IMG_3840 IMG_3863I took a gazillion pictures of The Crow for some reason, so I plan to dedicate a post to it.  But for now let me say that once I knew I was sending it to Wendy, I mounted it on velvet and added satin binding to the lower section… soft textures that will be inviting to the touch!