giving thanks

some of my nearest and dearest have made and sent the most thoughtful gifts...

such a generous surprise from Heather, who knows my feelings about trees..

we studied them together.

she even contacted my hub to make the arrangements. 

i was so moved by this gift to the earth!   

and not long after the worst, I received

"Fairy dust" by Handstories (embiggen to see all the dust!)  

all I had to do was mention faeries, and off she went!  

it even includes a fragment of Grandma's sheet 

(and there aren't many people who can say that!)

it softened my heart and made each day a little easier to bear.

and then such preciousness blew in from my dear Dana of Leililaloo, 

who knew from across the pond how much I needed gentle care.  

she even included the tree painting, below.  

there were also lovely cards, texts, comments here and facebook messages of support and love.

i'm still heartbroken, but i'm also ecstatic to have such friendship.

i feel very blessed to have such a father,

and to still have such beautiful souls in my life.

*thank you all*

the day of the elder coat

so i've reimagined my elder cloth, or at least a portion of it, as an elder coat.  

it's been so easy.  which makes me feel i'm on the right track.  i had taken the old quilt top and backed it with muslin with the idea of it being the middle part of the elder cloth.  but it was a great rectangle, and it seemed perfectly formed for cutting an opening and a neck.  and then i added some elderberry-dyed patches to reinforce the shoulders, and then a binding around the neck.  and the cross-stitch i put on the inside, so that it doesn't take over the design, but still it's there for us.  

jude's boro 2 class is quite amazing for inspiration of this sort and in general.  and helping me to think through how i want to dress and why.  this coat is so very jude as someone said, but i'll take that as a big YES and figure it can be me, too.  i can feel elderberry in it so fully, and i'll treasure it regardless of whether it's altogether representative of my style.  maybe it's my emerging style, or maybe it's just a mule-coat, my heirloom.

it's not even close to done yet.  lots of patching and mending left to do with the old cloth and basic stitching to hold everything down.  but i can already wear it, which is oh so satisfying.  and the ideas are flowing.  i think next i'll bundle dye with some rusty old horseshoes, then look at embroidering some sort of a mane and maybe a tail down the back.  and her brand of course.  and lots of other symbols and bits of memories in all the patches. 

home again

i'm finally home and decompressing following something really exciting: i filmed a spindling class for craftsy.com!!! it was incredible going to their studios in denver, working with professional producers and video folks, and meeting the genuinely nice people who work there. i can't believe how well they took care of me, from fixing my hair to making me drink water.  the class should be launched in just a couple of weeks!!  i'll keep you posted.

one of the best parts was meeting knitwear designer carol feller who came all the way from ireland to film knitting classes for craftsy! i so enjoyed hanging out in the evenings with carol over local beers, milk and cookies (free at our hotel!) and comparing notes on our days of filming... we even stole a visit to the adorable LYS, fancy tiger craft, and i treated myself to some yarn to make her killybegs cardi. i cast on the last night i was there and knitted all the way home.

and speaking of home... some quickie instagrams ...

my piece "i left my home in georgia" is in the upcoming show curated by the infamous ellen "left eye" schinderman!!!  it's somewhat of a map of my old homeplace which looms large in my memory, the place we left more than three years ago. home is where the needle marks and it is opening june 9th in LA.  yes it is.

elder stitching on a rainy day

did some magic diarying this morning.  finally did some work on my elder cloth.  even with the wonderful distractions from nancy's destash - all those studio mags!!  i'm back to a version of the original design, but with the dyed woven wool blanket on each side and the small quilt that i'm thinking of as a saddle blanket in the center.  since the small quilt has been deconstructed, i think i'm saving it's precious tattered interior for another project and using the stronger part that i had originally planned for this cloth.  that meant re-backing the existing piecing it with the invisible baste on muslin.  and also adding a beautifully dyed fabric from arlee.

i've a long way to go yet with mending, connecting and embellishing, and there are lots of elements of confusion to me right now.  how to join the thick woven cloths with the cotton center and getting the weights just right.  how to back the center without backing the sides.  how to bind the whole thing.  what sort of stitch design i want.  but it feels just right, like it's the journey i'm needing and meant to take... one about family and elders and piecing together our stories somehow around and through elderberry, who i thought of with most every stitch.  funny that i still haven't taken scissors to cloth to make this quilt, unless you count cutting threads.

Cindy:s Core

I feel so lucky to have Cindy:s Core sitting here next to me as I stitch. This piece of Cindy:s is going to be featured at the upcoming show at the Hotel Hadley Studios, see the flyer below.

I couldn:t resist photographing Core to show it off here, and for when I have to send it back.. all this heart-full and intricate art work done by our Cindy of Handstories...

Our Moon

Here's a sneak peek of the moon in Cindy's Core which I have my greedy paws on... more soon!


And the pink moon last night, which coincided with my first real, official shop update. I even got all fancy and made a newsletter announcing it (subscribe here!) It went so well, I'm swamped with orders, which makes me happy, happy.

It was cool how many instagrammers were shooting the moon last night, that same moon.
Like Grace said, it's really Something.

And despite a setback in my plan for blue immersion, I'm still dipping..

I've not usually dyed angora. I only want to work with natural dyes, and the natural colours of the rabbits seem plenty interesting to me. I read that the luxuriousness of the angora fiber can be sort of at odds aesthetically with the earthiness of natural dyes - whereas on wool it is rustic and lovely. And on the whole, I have tended to agree...
But with indigo, it's a wholly different matter.
Indigo-dyed angora = magic.
The fiber is from Alvin.

i left my home in georgia

i think the new home studio is going to be productive.
i did more work yesterday than i have in ages.

this is a hard piece for me, my old homeplace.
i could hardly bear to leave it.
i still can't think about it without hurting.
so i'm stitching it.
and the cloth takes it, and holds it and keeps it.

this is just the beginning, and with bits of cloth from cindy and nancy.

ps...i'm going to new hampshire in august to study with india!

i started

i traded for some of the most gorgeous wool yesterday.. it's from a mule sheep which is the name for particular sorts of cross-bred sheep.. in this case a bluefaced leicester and jacob cross. the wool had been processed into a luscious striped roving, and i just knew i needed to try and felt it with my tattered pieced top. the mule reference really had nothing to do with why i wanted to use this wool for my cloth, at least not consciously, but how strangely appropriate!?!

so i started by making some prefelt (i've never been much of a felter, but so easy and so much fun!) and then added a bit of my tattered pieced top to it. but i was afraid at that point to get too involved in the felting action.. it's fairly vigorous and i didn't want to damage the scrappy bits. so i started stitching the top down first. once it's all secure, i should be able to continue felting.. at some point.

i can't even describe the feel of the needle gliding through these soft old scraps and prefelt. other than bliss. i'll add another layer here or there and it will still be.

***for anyone who wants to help me figure this out, i'd so appreciate it... india has a number of projects along these lines in second skin. i was following along generally with the instructions for the tube-felted scarf on pp. 215-216, but i got stumped. the idea is to put down some muslin, then sewing scraps face down, then some wool sliver and lastly, your prefelt. (then she describes a resist-felting process which i'm skipping.) but i do want to end up with my scraps face-up, on top of and melded into my felt. i'm just not clear how this works with the muslin - it seems much easier to stitch and felt with the muslin on top, so that your scraps don't go sliding around, but then how do the scraps end up on top? it is something to do with cutting the scarf into a spiral?

she had a brand

it hit me the other day that elderberry was branded. on her right thigh. i couldn't picture what the brand looked like. memories fade so quickly.

i went looking through photos, to remember.

from welcome to my world, 4-17-10. blogs are helpful things.


from an elder cloth, posted 7-9-11. you can see it a little better in this pic. her hair was shorter, it was summer and she had shed.

can you see it there? ♀
like a sideways stick figure. a hangman without the legs.
or perhaps a sideways symbol for female, or venus.
(although there would have been no need to brand her female, that was easy enough to see.)

i wish i could look at it again, trace it with my fingers. but she didn't like being touched.

i can't imagine what this symbol must have meant meant to those who marked her. i don't want to know or imagine what that was like. but it will, it must be part of my cloth.

use vs beauty, or, the limits of what remains

excavation, part 2: removing the top pieced layer from the backing and pulling away the batting...


i've only done this corner so far, to see, and here's what's left of the pieced top...



it's so beautiful, but so very delicate.
i'm not sure that re-backing it will enhance it or make it last.
and what are these fabrics, anyway?
they look and feel gauzy, organza-ish.
no wonder she whose stitches i've removed encased it inside the other quilt.
what to do, what to do..

excavation part 1

i've been stumped all this time about what to do with my elder cloth. i didn't want to rush it, and figured the answer would come in time. i bought some scrim to stabilize the open areas, but then realized it still wouldn't work with doggy paws. then recently i saw the discussions on bee creative where deb was having a similar issue, and cindy suggested weaving into the cloth, which worked great. then cindy suggested needle weaving, which would be so time-consuming, but brilliant.

still, i couldn't get going with it. the size of my starter cloth was intimidating. i did some stitching, trying to tack things down, but it didn't feel good, and i couldn't visualize it. so i did what i should have done ages ago and put the cloth on the wall.


looking at the whole of it, with the huge seam down the middle, it looks to have been joined not for any design purpose, but just to keep the cloth together and to act as batting in the smaller quilt.


looking at that seam, i just couldn't resist...

and i see that this inner quilt is separately quilted and backed, and only lightly tacked to the current back.


so i am now bent on deconstruction. after i fully remove this backing (and use it somewhere else in this cloth), i think i'm also going to take the entire ragged pieced top layer off and re-back it without the batting (like cindy suggested early on!) and maybe rework some of the pieces with weaving of some kind. we'll see..

why i have too many things..

a baby quilt, another estate find by mum. i couldn't resist showing you. hope you're enjoying such sweetness & light wherever you are.

tea and bleach

trying some solar dyeing with natural dyes from blue castle fiber arts. i've never tried the powdered stuff, and it even comes with an herbal mordant! so i'm enjoying the experimenting... and putting this blazing sun to some good use..


feathers gathered just from this afternoon.. the birds are moulting. lots of tail feathers this time of year too, on the ground, not on the birds. i wonder if they know about jude's magic feather project.. i think they might send her some real feathers along with the stitched ones.


a little experiment with bleach and tea, tea and bleach. staining and removing stain, like remembering and forgetting, over and over. the splotchiness of this block may be overdone 80s, but it does remind me of elderberry's colours. her horse mom was an appaloosa. i was thinking a lot about elderberry being sterile and how i think that's part of what makes me want to honor her. i worry about mules, maiden aunties, spinsters, and crones without offspring... who will remember us? i am working on expanding my outworn ideas of family and fertility.

the heat has inhibited exploring and gathering, but i still need to look for an elderberry bush nearby. there was a lovely mother elder at our old house, sprung right at the site of the blanched, fallen oak, but i never dyed with her. i'm so grateful to have found some elderberry partners.