Jewels of the Soul

I have been thinking about questions, as well as stitching them onto a violet velvet piece which will go beneath the part of Palace of the Soul that my mother embroidered with butterflies that used to be the bib of a piece of clothing she made for me. I will add buttons and keep the bib fastened on the lower edge to make it like a trap door of sorts - or a hinged lid. A recurring symbol for me is that of the treasure chest or trunk full of jewels. I once made my son a cake shaped like that for his fifth birthday, full of candies for the jewels, including gold coins of course, along with a Pirate theme. When I was about that age, I lined up for hours to ask t.v. personality Mr. Dressup a question: How do you make your trunk disappear? I had no conception that such things could be done with editing, dry ice and camera tricks, so I was a little disappointed with the answer. I am stitching question marks as the jewels in my 'trunk' because they are of so much value. A question leads me on a quest of discovery and arises from what matters to me, which relates to how I make meaning and as a kind of organ of meaning, the soul offers up these jewels. To draw a question mark I start with an organic circling motion, seeking around until with a certain, downward stroke I define what it is I want to understand and I further solidify that focus with the emphasis of a dot - which can be a beginning or an end - and both. See the button holes at either top corner?

And what's inside this package I received today?

I will be starting up a vat or two in the next few days, and I probably won't wait for the online class to begin dipping into the blue. Strangely, my printer has not been printing blue for the last two weeks, since I got my class supply list, and there is still blue ink in the cartridge and cleaning doesn't help...

Could be a sign.

Unicorn Dreaming

I came across this peeling bark yesterday, with it's intriguing texture revealing successive layers beneath. This was my mother's trunk, which was locked when I first received it, until the day my son came to ask me what was inside it as I sat making a major decision about my life direction - which track to take for my Master's degree. After telling him I did not know, I suddenly pictured the key to it being inside my mother's old sewing box of buttons. I went and checked, and indeed there was a key which did open the trunk to reveal alot of my childhood art work. I decided I would choose the creative expression track for my studies in Transpersonal Psychology.

Earlier in the day, I had been thinking about the symbols on Palace of the Soul - how my unicorn is made of old thin jean material I used to wear and how nearly all the other fabric in the cloth is new - scraps and bits of different materials, but the only used cloth is a piece of old linen tablecloth I snow dyed and handkerchief I natural dyed - both without any personal history for me. I cleared my various stitched cloths from the top of the chest to hang about my studio and looked inside at some of the art, noting this painting of a unicorn I did when I was a child and remembering I also wrote a unicorn poem when I was twelve:

And there was this copper etched print I made in highschool, with its rainbow horn like the one on the unicorn on Palace of the Soul.

And here is the portfolio I stitched back then, to hold the work I made:

At one time, I imagined I would breed race horses and had a page of names all beginning with 'Unicorn' ready for my future foals! So the use of the old jean fabric for my unicorn on Palace of the Soul 'fits' right in as it's a symbol that has been with me for a long time.

Walking Between

I've added a personal symbol to the cornerstone of 'Palace of the Soul'. You may recognize the image based on a Chauvet cave bear that I stitched on nunofelt last October: http://fibreheart.blogspot.com/2011/10/tracking-time.html Part of the bear is on topside fabric - representing more concrete reality - and part is on the fabric's underside - symbolizing another dimension. I have many meaningful associations with bears and love when I see one by chance in the wilds.

Personal Patterns Embedded in Cloth

Yesterday was the last day of the Pattern Design course I've been taking and here is the cloth I made of my personal symbol as the culmination of my learning. The heart and triple spiral within a diamond all encircled, express my philosophy or visual belief system, valuing love, courage, growth, creation, transformation as a woman, truth, beauty, wholeness and eternity - among others. I am pleased that I found a way to make a repeat pattern by hand that expresses the feeling and look that is true to the meaning of it, for me.

Pattern, with it's repeat symbolism and vast ways of being expressed and organized, is a huge language so intrinsic to the roots of humanity as identifying marks offering specific information, yet in spite of - or maybe because of - the vast proliferation, sheer variety and abundance of it today, its significance has been largely lost or dismissed as being purely decorative. Here is a little stitching started in class on a sampler:

Renewing What I Have

Coleslaw for dinner, so why not pop the wilted outer leaves into a dye bath with some linen? Almost looks like an octopus lurking in there... I got this soft violet colour and the other fabrics here are ecualyptus bark dyed and plain white for comparision.

And then I moved on to cherry bark, using shibori techniques and getting a different and deeper brown, which I like.

When I put a variety of small bits of fabric into the same dye pot later, it was nearly spent and here's the much lighter colour it produced.

I also came up with a pattern on paper that I like and tried out variations of it and am thinking about how I will translate it to fabric. I'm basing my repeat pattern on a very meaningful symbol I developed from four shapes about ten years ago for my business card that has also been a signature on my quilts.

Diamonds, Bits and Pieces

Over time, I've noticed how I'm drawn to the diamond shape and I've been keeping a book of diamonds - with photos of diamonds I see, a collage of a diamond, etc. This is the cover I made for it - the weaving was on a card I bought: Tomorrow I start a course about pattern at the Victoria College of Art with Lesley Turner. I plan to use a personal symbol I developed in the past which includes the diamond shape. I have basted together the piece below, which I began in Jude Hill's Spiritcloth online class last year. It's a story about my creative process and there's much stitch and embellishing left to do on it.

I have completed the chicken's head:

And some peonies left this colour on some silk:

New Life

I couldn't 'resist' trying a natural dyed shibori egg. The blueberries I used created a lovely soft grey. I also heated a mixture of orange peel and cinnamon for another egg, which yielded beige and smelled delicious. And what else would I be stitching on Easter, but this piece? So many seed stitches rising out of the ground - the return of life. Now I have the somewhat tricky stitching below the wave of silk gauze, to solidify the ground - the getting to solid ground part.

I also made a list this morning of reoccurring symbols in my work and came up with over 50, although it's not comprehensive. Just thinking about my visual vocabulary.