Texture Tuesday ... mending heart

An overly frayed and broken heart was being stitched

around love

and loss.

  

It's been set aside for a long time ... things changed ... 

the original intent vanished.

My friend had lost her heart's desire (or so she thought) and I wanted

to give her something to mark the moments, the importance of what she felt,

so I used remnants of an old, torn work shirt she'd given me

and I wove them under & through the soft velvet and the transparent lace 

in an effort to symbolize in some small way, what was happening.

textured with framed

I wanted to say to her ~ she, who has one of the most open hearts I know ~

that the only way to have a broken heart is to have offered an open heart in the first place ...

and that is a most beautiful thing.  Her special treasure.

I pinned a quote to the edge of the backing, to ride along as I worked:

Life will break you.  Nobody can protect you from that,

and living alone won't either, for solitude will also 

break you with its yearning.  You have to love.

You have to feel.  It is the reason you are here on earth.

You are here to risk your heart.  You are here to be

swallowed up.  And when it happens that you are broken,

or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near,

let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the

apples falling all around you in heaps,

wasting their sweetness.  Tell yourself

you tasted as many as you could.

~ Louise Erdrich, from The Painted Drum ~

Now this piece will change direction a bit, as my friend did not lose her dear one after all

and both their hearts are stronger for the separation.

Since that more difficult time, some wooden beads have come into my possession

laying like a sketch at the moment,

but waiting to be sewn onto this story.

And so it goes,

with love.

: : :

It's all about love this week over at Kim Klassen's place ...