Spirit Cloth | Pattern and Outrage

Rabbit constellation

This is a small gallery revealing Jude Hill‘s influence and inspiration. I am feeling nostalgic. It’s been different without her private classes. And I’ve been ‘away’ from her and others’ blogs — more consumed with writing and the ten month project for Charleston. I miss being on a learning curve that was as exciting as it was steep.

Life is all about change. And it’s hard, too. We are all constantly adapting to various burdens, impositions or difficulties — aging not the least of them. One of the things I have admired about Jude the most is her capacity for invention — not just of her cloth creations (the way she can take an idea in fifteen directions, each of them further than I could possibly have imagined), but also of how she has conducted herself online — generously, with poetry and beauty, and with unbelievable technological skill.

The reinvention of late seems to be toward greater privacy, which of course I respect, but the thought of her going away makes me panic a little.

There is so much more I want to say about this, but I haven’t done my morning pages yet and the dog will need walking soon, so it’ll have to wait.

Last week marked the beginning of another online learning adventure with Jude Hill over at Spirit Cloth. I will not footnote every idea/work that springs from there (out of laziness; also to honor how quickly the ideas may flow). Just know here, upfront, there will be many strands of discussion from that forum showing up here, with gratitude and excitement!I made many woven rectangles during Jude’s class “Cloth to Cloth”. At that time, I discovered how one could FIRST weave with the cloth, THEN create more weaving with thread (after all, a RUNNING STITCH is essentially a weave — over/under, over/under), AND THEN, create more faux weaving by appliqueing chips of fabric onto the surface.
I found the exercise of making these rectangles satisfying and irresistible. I have piles of them downstairs. Pictured above are four that were lying about. Early experiments in incorporating woven rectangles into larger quilts (like the landscape, upper right) were not always successful.

Last night I worked on a Little Pink Elephant (notice her woven skin!!).
The horizontal blue stitching came first. Next, I stitched the vertical white thread to look like weaving. Unlike a loom, where the vertical threads would be the stable, structure-forming threads, my verticals are wobbly… they are forced to accommodate the less-than-regular rhythm of the blue.

I am in love with the concentric circles in the sky.

Would I have thought to interrupt the circles’ paths around the blue disk without the discussion of weaving at Spirit Cloth? I don’t know. I’ll probably travel a different color thread through the white circles.

The rest of the pictures are from the morning’s walk and all triggered by the thoughts of weave in general and basket-making in particular.