As 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.
Wendy 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.
Fabric 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!!
I 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!
