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.