Red Thread Studio: Slow Cloth, New Cloth, Art Cloth

After the Moon, the Sun, Chocolate Fashion and Pattern Design

It's very hot here and I don't have the energy for a full-on thoughtful or creative post, but here's an update. After writing about the full moon last week, here comes the sun: my young friend Aidan, age 5, and I made this sun plaque for his front door in honor of this hot season and all the reasons we love the good fire of the sun.

Aidan painted the face himself, and directed the design. The gold stars and rainbow background were entirely his idea. The instructions for making the plaque from heavy cardboard came from this book.

I believe in using reasonably high quality art and craft supplies when possible, even -- well, especially -- for children, and Aidan did a great job using my good acrylic paints and brushes. There was some paint loss, but not too much, and it was worth it for his enjoyment and freedom in creating; he learned about mixing colors and gesso and keeping brushes wet.

Aidan and I share the same birthday,  and he's an incredibly creative and  sensitive soul; I love spending time with him.

In other news . . . much as I love it, I don't write much about things like chocolate in order to (a) avoid being too much of a middle-aged yoga-practicing fiber-arts-loving cliche, and (b) because I am not a fan of the language and relationship of addiction that is so often applied to women for things like chocolate and shoes and shopping -- it isn't really addiction in most cases, and I think talking about it that way diminishes us and I don't want to contribute to it. That's my soapbox. This, however, is a spectacular piece of chocolate fashion art, worthy of Project Runway or better. Logan Callihan, a friend of a friend living in Buenos Aires, sent this picture taken at Vasalissa,  an artisan chocolatier there (the English version of the site is under construction, but you'll get the flavor):

And finally, for garment sewers and fashion designers, I've been meaning to post a link to The Center for Pattern Design, a new facility founded by Sandra Ericson and Ed Breed to "provide education, resources, archives and products that encourage greater public interest in pattern making, further recognition for master pattern makers and improved documentation of pattern systems and printed materials to preserve the field of study." That's quite a mission, and the classes look fantastic. I'd love to take Art in Fashion Design. I'm not quite sure how it works, but some of these classes are available online, so take a look. Ericson and Breed are based in St. Helena, CA.

Full Thunder Moon

We are forever tied
Still on the run
To the medicine man
For all the sad things we've done
    -- Shawn Colvin, Orion in the Sky

I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon.
   -- The Waterboys, Whole of the Moon

Tonight is the full moon, called the Full Buck Moon or Full Thunder Moon. Jessica Prentice calls it the Wort Moon, an old word for medicinal plants, in her book Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection, an esoteric and fascinating book about food and plant traditions.

Today is also the anniversary of my father's death, so that's been on my mind today. He would never have said that he was in any way creative or spiritual, but I 'm not so sure. He was a physicist, the branch of science that seems to embrace art, spirit and mysticism more than most, and he loved the elegance and beauty and mystery of it.

As I've written before, he was both brilliant and wounded, and it's impossible for me to think about one without the other. It wasn't easy being his daughter and I'm still working on unraveling the tangled knots of it.

But he loved music, art, books and poetry; he took us to museums and movies and brought home The Monkees and The Seekers and Joan Baez and Ian & Sylvia albums. He would sing Red River Valley and Four Strong Winds. He had a rule that it was always okay to spend money on books and music, a "rule" that I call upon to this day every time I need to rationalize an iTunes or bookstore visit. During his illness, he'd quote A. E. Housman's sad poem, The Garden of Proserpine:

From too much love of living
From hope and fear set free
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no man lives forever
That dead men rise up never
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

So, my own river is a little weary today but I'll be back soon with something more textile-ish. Put on some music, have too much live of living and make this Thunder Moon your own on this high summer evening. Jessica Prentice suggests making root beer for this moon; or you could just have a root beer float on me.

moon photo mosaic by yeimaya -- some rights reserved.

All Ebb, No Flow

I had a friend who described me as someone who wakes up every day ready to engage in hand-to-hand combat with her demons. This week Team Demon is a little ahead -- not by much, and not for long, but I feel like I'm moving through water these days. All the doors have closed, but there are no windows opening and it's getting hot in here. You've been there, I'm sure.

So you try everything -- pushing the river, surrendering to the river, being joyful though you've considered all the facts, as Wendell Berry said. You do your work and yoga and meditation and dance and more work and creating and reaching out and therapy and sending resumes and reading oh-so-helpful books and eating right and thinking positive and good grief, where is the fun? The excitement? The buzz? The magic? The prize? The romance? The passion? It's all overdue.

But this helps. I will snap out of it and return to the mantra -- our topic. And speaking of overdue, I headed back to the library to return the book on living complaint-free because someone else had it on hold -- and clearly I didn't finish the book -- but I found something less pious and much more interesting: another gorgeous Thames & Hudson textile book. Quilting, Patchwork & Applique: A World Guide is far more than the title or cover suggests. I almost passed it by, thinking it would focus on traditional patchwork quilts, but it is really a comprehensive survey of global textile techniques and culture. There are hundreds of  beautiful color illustrations of garments, household textiles, ceremonial and ritual textiles, recycled-fabric patchwork, embroidery from India, Asia, Europe, Africa -- it's encyclopedic and stunning, and full of inspiration.

The book is recent, published just last fall, so it has a very current sensibility in the text. She mentions the Gee's Bend quilts -- I'm going to see the exhibition on Saturday. I wonder how it will be to see them after seeing so many images of them, and hearing the story for so long in the media.

Watching the Wheels

 People say I'm crazy
Dreaming my life away
Well they give me all kinds of advice
Designed to enlighten me
When I say I'm doing fine
They look at me kind of strange
Don't you miss the big time
You're no longer in the game
    -- John Lennon, Watching the Wheels

I have nothing profound to say today . . . but promised to post every day this week to see what that feels like and what it leads to, so here I am. It's a hot, quiet Friday. Here are a couple of fabric postcards that will get sent off soon:

And an older one that was sent to a dear surfing friend:

Monday Monday

Every once in a while I come across a site that I'm sure I must be the last to discover, but just in case, I'm going to tell you about it anyway: Fiber Arts Calls for Entry is just what it says, a fantastic aggregate of opportunities for textile artists.

Via Fibercopia, I found One World Textiles. My Australian readers may know this site already. I would say that this is eye candy for global textile lovers, but on a long walk this morning through a glorious green landscape under blue sky, I decided that "eye candy" isn't really an appropriate term for things that are really eye and soul nourishment. That's what these textiles are -- every thread has a soul, indeed. And check out the book list -- more than a hundred great recommendations on global textiles. It's sending me to the library.

We've had thunderstorms and windstorms in the past couple of weeks -- with a couple of four- and five-hour power outages (inevitably right after buying a refrigerator full of groceries). It's made me acutely aware of how dependent I am on electricity. So what can you do when there's no computer, sewing machine, stove, iron, radio or CD player? Why, hand stitching, of course. I began some bead embroidery yesterday -- something I really go in phases with, and find deeply meditative and healing when the time is right.

A quick follow-up on the colonoscopy: It's so not bad. If it's on your list, do it. I'm telling you, if they marketed it as a Total Spa Cleanse with Brief Induced Nap, they'd have no problem at all getting people there. I felt great the next day.

Time Waits for No One

My father used to call me "Miss-elaine-eous" and I must have been eleven or twelve years old before I realized that he was making a play on the word "miscellaneous." So here are my MissElaineous offerings for today . . .

• The Maiwa Textile Workshops for 2008 are up, and they look completely inspiring. Workshops are 2-3 days; the schedule begins in September and goes through early November, so there are a lot of opportunities to find your way to Vancouver. I'd love to take the blockprinting workshop and The Expressive Stitch. Well, really, I'd love to take almost all of them.
• Have I written yet about Permacouture Institute here? This is a new nonprofit organization with a very creative and activist sustainable textile and Slow Cloth orientation. I spoke by phone with founder and executive director Sasha Duerr today -- this woman is amazing and will make some positive waves in the textile world, I'm sure of that. She's an expert on natural dyeing and has a special interest in edible dye plants (cabbage, beets, onions, etc.) and all the possibilities inherent in being able to grow things that will both feed us and color our fiber without harm to the environment. We talked about her work and about some of my ideas for taking the Slow Cloth concept to new levels. . . . everything is possible, right?
• I've been meaning to link to a blog post by UK biologist and textile artist Mags Ramsay on The Character of Cloth. I love the work she's doing with indigenous African textiles -- very beautiful and with a great "spirit cloth" sensibility.

That's what I've got today. Off topic, this week has been a continuation of a pretty intense and unrelenting healing journey -- I've been prescribed physical therapy for my neck, and Monday was the first visit. I wasn't quite prepared for the tremendous amount of grief and sadness stored in that area that the bodywork released. Though in practical terms the therapy is necessary for some dental work to be successful, on another level it's evidently part of a lot of ongoing work I'm doing on old emotional issues - according to Dr. Christiane Northrup, at 50 all of your unfinished business from childhood MUST be resolved if you're to stay healthy, and it will rear up like an immovable elephant in the room if you don't. I'm finding that to be all too true, and it turns out my unfinished business is a doozy.

Finally, I have a colonoscopy scheduled on Friday as the follow-up to March's illness. I tell you this not to give you Too Much Information, but to encourage you to get this test if you are around 50, and not be embarrassed or put it off. I know, I don't feel old enough for it either. On the inside, I'm about 16 -- rebellious, darkly romantic and trying to figure out what to be when I grow up. But on the outside, time waits for no one (or Tom Waits for No One, as we fans say) and we must attend to our bodies. We are all of the nature to age, as the Buddhists say, even if 50 is the new 30. I hope the procedure will be as dignified and painless as possible.

And hey, where are the Fiber Artists for Obama? They seem to have let their blog go dormant. They ought to be celebrating today. Fiber art in the White House! I'm sad for the way Hillary has sometimes been treated, and  proud of her for the most part despite some missteps. But we do need a change, and no one has set a fire in young voters like Obama has since Bobby Kennedy, and I'm all for that (I was and still am a John Edwards fan, too, and I truly hope there's a place for him in Obama's cabinet after a November victory). Like me, this country has a lot of healing to do -- the old ways just aren't working.

I hope you, cherished readers and all who find their way here, are also healing from anything that ails you. Onward we go.

Silk Throw and Mini-Mood-Boards

There isn't a whole lot of art happening in my life at the moment, but I did manage to finish a gift project this weekend -- one of the silk throws I mentioned forever ago. The idea of fringe went by the wayside in favor of a very simple and minimal row of pearl nuggets stitched onto each side. The silk velvet proved true to its reputation -- hard to work with but so incredibly soft and seductive. The challenge is that the silk velvet has a loose weave and a tendency to "grow" while the silk dupioni does not, so you end up with more fabric on one side than the other no matter how carefully you've cut.

I think a take-no-prisoners approach to staystitching on the velvet might help, and I'll try that on the next one. This one is for my friend Angela and her new husband, who live in Germany. Angela is an expert belly dancer and one of the people who inspired me to take classes, which is another post for another time.

I also came across something else I thought might be interesting to share. Here's the backstory: In the summer of 2001, I applied for an editorial job at Threads magazine. This was before they changed over to strictly garment-sewing technique. I got an interview, and booked a flight for  . . . you guessed it . . . September 11, 2001. The flight didn't take off, of course, but I was the last person outbound from Denver whose luggage they took before everything shut down, so I was in the airport for many hours trying to get my luggage back, with thousands of others in complete shock and confusion.

Though I did end up flying out for the interview a couple of weeks later, by then the economic downturn had begun and everybody's plans had changed, so I didn't get the job. But to get to the point . . . they had asked me to throw together some pages of images and fabric to show them how I worked visually and how I might put together a page. I created five or six of these; I guess now we'd call them mini-mood boards. I love the mood board concept -- it was a great exercise to create these.

So I found my Threads mood boards the other day -- here's one, and I'll photograph the rest and put them up. These have fabric swatches layered over collaged paper images -- this one has a narrow swatch of lavender silk along the left side. The lower image is a postcard of a painting by the magnificent Wolf Kahn.

I keep a collage box full of pages torn from magazines -- often just for the colors, as these were, or pictures of clothes for the "style file"  -- old postcards, cancelled stamps, maps, all that sort of thing. It's full of enough ideas and idea triggers for a lot of work. I know the current thinking is anti-clutter, and this box would be clutter to a lot of people, but it's hidden treasure and inspiration to me.

Disclosure and Sequins

Before you knew me
An angel came to me
I wrestled him down to the ground
He said he could cure me
I said
That don't worry me now
    -- Shawn Colvin, That Don't Worry Me Now

Re my last post  . . . I don't plan to stop writing about Slow Cloth or sustainable textiles . . .not in the least. I feel like I've just started, and I have some big ideas for the whole Slow Cloth approach. I just have to figure out the best way to do it, and find like-minded people to work with on some of my plans and ideas.

It's a gray day here, but this post over at My Marrakesh about the curative power of sequins brightened it considerably. Go visit! And if you love floral textile designs, you'll find some gorgeous eye candy in Kim Parker Home. Only after I got the book home did I realize that some silk matelasse that I bought quite a few years ago has to be one of her designs. Her Web site is here.

Back to work, and I will see you soon.

Mental Gridlock

My next scheduled post on the Slow Cloth list is the topic of Beauty. I was all rarin' to go on it last week, and e-mailed someone with a very popular and charming blog about using one of her photos. Though she said yes, she was so curt and unappreciative about it that the photo's beauty was diminished for me, and I no longer want to use it. There are other beautiful images to choose from, but it derailed me, so here I am a week later. The topic of beauty is coming, and in the meantime, in the words of the walrus, let's talk of many things.

I've had a sense of mental gridlock with this blog lately. I want to write about so many things, but it seems now as if it should be two separate blogs -- one on sustainable and organic textiles, clothing, and companies (that would probably replace the dormant Organic Confidential), and a second for art, craft, culture, and the Slow Cloth concept. What do you think? That would mean two new blog names -- there actually is another Red Thread Studio, and in any case, I think that name is no longer quite right for the me of today, rather than the me of some years ago when I first heard the legend of the red thread.

On the green side of things: My report, The International Market for Sustainable Apparel, was published; you can read the press release here and the abstract and table of contents here. These reports sell to businesses for alarming amounts of money, but have no fear, the money goes to the publisher, not me (though I was paid to write it and grateful for it!). It's out of the price range for individuals, but if you have specific questions I am more than happy to answer them and recommend other resources that are accessible. In any case, I hope it may help in my search for the right work.

Sadly, one of the most innovative and risk-taking sustainable apparel companies folded this week, unable to secure enough financing. NAU was trying to achieve very high levels of aesthetic beauty, high performance, and sustainable materials and production, all packaged in a Slow Fashion design philosophy, but they may not have been flashy enough for today's standards. There is a long way to go in this market, despite the indisputable successes and media attention of 2007.

And then the NY Times had a silly article about Sarah Jessica Parker's clothing line, in which nothing sells for more than $8.98, but of course they claim there are no sweatshops involved because the factories are monitored. By whom? According to whose standards? How often? I think the reporter failed to do the job on this story, as he keeps asking how clothes can be made at this price but never really answers the question. And it's a good question. I'm not sure it's possible without some exploitation of resources and/or people.

On the art and craft side, I found the True Stitches blog, another kindred spirit. I especially loved her post about the level of critique on craft blogs and the unspoken rule that you can't ever say you don't like something. I'm so glad someone spoke up about this. I'd much rather have someone respond honestly to my work than just tell me it's great all the time. As I said in my comment to this post, aren't we smart enough and tough enough for real dialogue? I'm a marshmallow underneath my curmudgeonly exterior, but as long as it's not a personal attack, I'm fine with people not liking everything I do and with collaborative process and conversation.

Finally, thanks to Judy Martin, who linked to me on her wonderful Judy's Journal blog (she has more than one, actually, with very intriguing and inspiring work), and welcome to new readers coming here through Judy. I love connecting to all these Canadians, as I am Canadian-born, though raised in the U.S.,  and just may end up back there or somewhere else if the election doesn't bring some new hope to this country. And off topic, I know (or maybe it's not,  but that's another post) but don't even get me started on more news this week about horrific acts of violence and abuse toward women and children. Surely we can do better.

Tomorrow -- back to art and fabric and beauty. Thank you for coming by, and for your patience with me with this long post, and the time between posts. I'd like to be posting daily, with more pictures, and I'm working on it.

Only Connect: Slow Cloth and Community

This is the second post in a series on 10 qualities of the Slow Cloth approach. This was a tough one; I've been trying to write this post all week, not sure if I'm saying too much about myself and whether what is so meaningful to me just sounds banal in this context. Maybe so, but let's give it a try, and see if my disjointed thoughts make any sense.

Let me start by saying I'm not much of a joiner. I've been outside the margins for pretty much my entire life; it's not what I wanted but that's how it turned out. My early life was randomly peripatetic, highly unstable and anything but normal; there were no consistent relatives, friends, or schools. I was the only girl in a family of boys, and therefore the lightning rod for my family's gender-related baggage and hostility; I was also separated from and accelerated out of my age group in school and scorned by my parents for wanting normal social activity. This didn't make me a very good candidate for a happy marriage and family, so I don't have children; much of the conversation among my friends in the last 20 years or so has been about things I can only observe, with both the sadness and freedom inherent in that. It's taken me most of my 50 years to even begin to tell the truth about my life and experiences, and to really begin to heal and allow myself some happiness.

The things I am good at and passionate about -- art, textile crafts, yoga, writing -- are most often solo activities, and whether that's a chicken or an egg, I don't know. I like to be invited to the party, and most of the time I'm really happy to be at the party once I get there, but because my nature is introverted, I need time alone or in very private company the next day or week to regenerate.

Too much information? This is all a roundabout way of saying that community is a concept that's been elusive for me. I am by no means an expert at it, and when I experience it, in ways other people take for granted, it can be revelatory. And not always comfortable. Yet I am a firm believer that community matters. In the world of Slow Cloth (which my keyboard wants to abbreviate to Sloth . . .that can't be good, can it?) we are all linked by some form of community, and for many of us, it's one of the great unexpected rewards and pleasures of making things with fiber.

Some of my very best experiences of community have been facilitated by common interest in textile art and craft. Like everything under the sun, this isn't new. Quilting bees are the best-known form of the special camaraderie that happens. Gen Y-ers didn't invent knitting gatherings. And today the internet and blog world has expanded infinitely our capacity to connect through a shared love or use of fiber. For many of us who work alone, this is a fantastic gift of community. Few of even the most introverted among us have the resources or endurance to be Georgia O'Keeffe alone in the desert; we have to find that happy medium between solitude and society.

I've refrained a little from referring to "those who stitch" as female, but mostly, we are. So when we gather, virtually or physically, both the way we connect with each other and the traditionally female activities that we do while connecting tend to be undervalued in society. A man might put "relationship management" on his resume as a valuable skill; it's what women do all the time. Creating community consciously, with intent and integrity is definitely valuable and life-enriching.

Formal or informal, communities always take work and there are always complications and challenges in the ways we relate. As the world gets smaller and the news gets more ominous, none of us will survive alone. There's a lot more to say about this, but that's enough for today. I don't have a conclusion except to say that I'm glad for the ways that textiles and cloth help me stay connected. The analogy of the thread that holds things together, often in a beautiful way, is a good one.

Photo of Gee's Bend quilting bee by Andre Natta. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons license.