this moment :: finishing

{  this moment  }

A single photo

~ no words ~

capturing a moment from the week.

A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

~ SouleMama


:::


inspired by the Friday reflections at Amanda's

Read More

The next leg

Read More

Running with stitches...

Scraps.  Lots and lots of them.  Fabrics piled according to color are starting to commandeer an entire corner of my workroom.  Recycled, discarded, second-hands and third-hands, the entire lot has come from being something else.  This idea sits well with me and I think I could spend the rest of my life and never touch new cloth again.

Stitching a few bits & pieces together now, making "components" for use in the upcoming Cloth to Cloth workshop, taught by Jude Hill.  Still working with raw, torn edges...admitting here that I am completely smitten with all things frayed.  

Also smitten with the simple running stitch.  What a restful enterprise coming from a stitch named for so much movement!  Nosed around, trying to learn more about it & came upon this magnificent book:

Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal

from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz and the Stella Kramrisch Collections

It's the catalog from an exhibition I wish I hadn't missed, on display earlier in the year at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  This is the first book-length study on kanthas published outside of South Asia - 304 pages of gloriously illustrated splendor.  More examples from the exhibition can be found on the museum site here. 

Some potent words from Darielle Mason, the Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalyan Art, who organized the exhibition,

"Like American patchwork quilts, kanthas are about memory.

They connect families and generations and they connect

the present with the past.

The everyday lives of Bengali women were seldom recorded

prior to the late 20th century, so kanthas are often

the only surviving physical traces of women's presence,

and the only way their personal voices may be heard."

Read More

Mending with the blues

The other day over at her place, Spirit Cloth, Jude was playing with gaps.  This got me to thinking about a few gaps of my own...

...ever thought about whether you are left-kneed or right-kneed?  Neither had I until I realized that ALL of my favorite jeans eventually look just like this -- a big hole in the left knee.  Never the right -- just the left.  Good to have things in ones life one can always count on, I suppose  ;>}

Pawing through the mending pile, the choice for the *sacrificial lamb* jeans was not the least bit difficult.  You should see the derriere on this pair...beyond hope I decided.  Off with its leg!

Thought it would be fun to just play with stitches, no particular goal in mind except to stop the drafts and add some reinforcement so out came a menagerie of embroidery thread recently gleaned from the local thrift store.  Ended up using every blue in the bag.

Kept the raggedy edges all 'round (I'm prone to that lately) although future laundering should fray them up nicely.  In the meantime, my favorite gardening jeans have a new lease on their days in the dirt.  Thanks to Jude for inspiring with her own particular style of "knee keepers."  


I love my new knee.  But look at that perfect RIGHT knee...what's up with that?!  One of life's mysteries.

Read More