imagination

Wanting to write about Kevin Quashie, his book recommended by Leesa Renee often: The Sovereignty of Quiet, which sounded so compelling, and I knew it had to do with Black activism in some sense. But when I got it through interlibrary loan, come to find out it’s a literary studies book - Quashie is a professor of African American literature, and the musings and studies within this book are grounded in poetry, fiction, photography and film. Which fascinated me, as a student of literature and poetry (and, now that I think about it, what caused me to consider art and literature as separate from activism in the first place? That hegemonic education is showing its face again…)

At any rate, the quiet that Quashie is highlighting is a fruitful interiority, every expression of which got me excitedly writing notes. He defines it this way: Quiet is “a metaphor for the full range of one’s inner life… the interior – dynamic and ravishing – is a stay against the dominance of the social world; it has its own sovereignty. It is hard to see, even harder to describe, but no less potent in its ineffability.” 

Greeting a huge elder fir near the Elwha River

He later explains that “the quiet subject is a subject… whose consciousness is not only shaped by struggle, but also by revelry, possibility, the wildness of the inner life.” This quiet is not a dampening, not at all the same as silencing, but an inner expansion of potential, an opening within that is not necessarily perceptible from the outside. Quashie calls the interior “expansive, voluptuous, creative, impulsive and dangerous…. not subject to one’s control, but instead has to be taken on its own terms.”

Collage ‘stepping stone’, part of an ongoing series

The examples illuminate how writers dwell in this quiet, voluptuous interior, and how it releases them from performance of expected roles and sentiments. Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha, from 1953, gives us a richness of consciousness that exemplifies self-contained power, in the simple truths of her daily experiences, which refuse to rely on a sense of plot, narrative trajectory, or the grand scheme of things. The woman, alive, alert, and perceiving things in her own way, is a lesson in the complexity of human life - something often denied to those being tokenized or asked to represent their community in lieu of themselves. Quashie explains, “The capacity to be animated by feeling is Maud Martha’s agency. It is not so much that she is naive to… social peril…; it is more that the beauty of the feeling, the tender and thrill of the moment, is more meaningful to her humanity.”

Handwoven cloth, being sewn into a Lichen Duster jacket, back of neck seam

The book builds on many other examples, including James Baldwin, and Audre Lorde, with whom I’m immersed at the moment, enhancing the themes of attention, curiosity, self-regard, community, and love, all of which gain flavor and influence in quiet. And then we are able to see how this gives strength for the inevitable struggle, having cultivated interior richness.

“To ask about the freedom within is to reimagine the collective such that the inclination to stand up for yourself is no longer limited to responding to the actions of others; instead, standing up for yourself means understanding your heart, your ambition, your vulnerabilities - it means engaging and living by these. Standing up for yourself is not oppositional, but abundant.”

My emphasis. That last line could be repeated again and again. It’s essentially the main theme coming out of this work, as I see it: the more people realize themselves, truly give voice and faith to who they can be apart from, and in spite of, the conditioned expectations, constraints, and delusions we all face, the richer we can all become, together.

Lichen Duster in progress, using handwoven fabric, resist-dyed raw silk, and Khadi silk. Giving the seams Hong Kong finish. Collage stepping stones on the wall behind.

Done but for side seams and hem

Thus it felt like something coming full circle when I opened Kevin Young’s edited anthology, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, and the first poem by the earliest published Black poet in America, Phyllis Wheatley, is On Imagination.

There are many facts of Phyllis Wheatley’s life (c. 1753-1784) that spark outrage and anger, from the sale of her person at auction before the age of 10, to the disbelief in her ability to write the poems she brought for publication, and later dismissive comments about the poems themselves by the likes of Thomas Jefferson. But apart from, and in spite of all that, she claimed for herself this interior landscape of promise and freedom, and her ode to Imagination is a song to this very possibility, a lyric confirmation of all that Kevin Quashie has been saying.

Imagination! who can sing thy force?

…

We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, 

And leave the rolling universe behind:

From star to star the mental optics rove,

Measure the skies, and range the realms above.

There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,

Or with new world amaze th’ unbounded soul.
…

At thy command joy rushes on the heart, 

And through the glowing veins the spirits dart.

(excerpted from On Imagination)

Waters of the Elwha river: cool, soothing, and free

It felt like some kind of lesson, to have the potency of interiority emphasized, over a span of centuries, from an enslaved woman, nearly denied the truth of her literacy, to a contemporary poet laureate. Urged by Quashie’s study, I’m paying attention and taking this emphasis to heart.

Rita Dove, from Thomas and Beulah:

Daystar

…

And just what was mother doing

out back with the field mice? Why,

building a palace. Later

that night when Thomas rolled over and

lurched into her, she would open her eyes 

and think of the place that was hers

for an hour – where

she was nothing,

pure nothing, in the middle of the day.

Elwha River, near Port Angeles, WA

And yes, I made a jacket using my own handwoven fabric. And that feels good. But I’ve been more compelled to share the poetry and surrounding thoughts. The Lichen Duster and a visit ot the Elwha River provide most of the visuals today, although they are only loosely related to the text.

This was the warp for the fabric for the jacket - it was on the loom for quite a while. I wove about 6.5 yards of 14” wide fabric. The duster pattern is good for backstrap woven cloth, because the pattern pieces are narrow.

taking up space

I’m just going to start with the piece that was conceived for the space, as a way of introducing my art show, which has been up for some time, and has two more weekends before closing on May 1. The show is called Yarn, Cloth, and the Pull of the Earth, and it’s hanging at the PNW Quilt & Fiber Art Museum in La Conner, WA. It’s quite an experience to have a space that I can fill all by myself - an interesting, faceted, space, since it’s the third floor of a historic Victorian house.

One room of the show, on the upper floor of the museum, with me weaving by the far window.

The walls tilt inward, about 5’ from the floor, and this was actually perfect for what I wanted to do. Most of the pieces in the show involve two layers: a woven ‘ground’, hung against the wall, and suspended ‘lines’ of handspun yarn, which need to be higher and a few inches in front of the ground. Without this tilt in the wall, it would have been tricky to figure out, but the space had what I needed, so I could just hang the work. The colored cotton panels with bunches of wool in between make up the one piece that I made specifically for that wall, after visiting the space to scope it out. In this sense, “taking up space” means I used the space almost as a medium for the work, taking it up as one takes up a tool in the hand.

Handspun, handwoven cotton in natural brown and green.

The woven cotton is all handspun, essentially whatever I had ready to weave, supplemented with some new brown and green fiber from Vreseis and Traditions in Cloth. It’s all two-ply yarn, and I plied same colors together until I ran out, then some skeins were mixed, then I likewise wove until I ran out, so the color changes in the weavings happen by chance. They are interspersed with walnut-dyed wool, a gift from Devin Helman, spun rough with no prep and plied back on itself. In several of the pieces for this show, I’ve been exploring the expressive potential of strands of handspun yarn, the way they are like drawn lines or brushstrokes, handmade marks that have unpredictable voices of their own.

Coffee Lines - a handspun yarn based on the theme of coffee, hanging at the top of the stairwell before you enter the exhibit.

Handspun wool lines, with handwoven ground of walnut-dyed commercial 10/2 cotton.

Handspun wool lines (rescue sheep’s wool), handwoven ground of commercial warp, handspun Navajo Churro weft.

Taking up space is the real value of the show for me. Having this opportunity to fill two rooms with my work, my priorities, my ideas about what is important, and hoping to help others appreciate the wonder of yarn and cloth. The nicest moments have been just sitting in there, weaving in the light through the window.

Detail of weaving in progress, all cotton, at the museum.

A special day when I coordinated well with my weaving. Thanks to Dana Weir for the photo.

View from room 1 to room 2, through white lines. Cotton Strips on the right - more handspun cotton, in white and grey.

Caravan handspun, on ground of linen warp, handspun wool weft.

My Caravan yarn got to come out and play, hanging with a new woven ground. The pieces are all interacting with one another, creating something with their crosstalk.

I also included some microscopic images of fibers, taken when I was doing conservation study and using polarized light microscopy to identify fiber content. The images were so beautiful, I wanted them to be shown as artwork - and they emphasize the theme of looking closely. There is more I could say, but it has taken me long enough to post about this show, and I’d like to leave this here today.

madder, indigo, persimmon, cloth

So why all this knitting and spinning and weaving and sewing and stuff? Well yes, handmade clothes and fabrics are wonderful, but the truth is, many of us do this because we love handling the materials. Fiber, yarn, and cloth are sources of discovery and wonder, and so we’re forever coming up with new ways to explore with them and through them.

Ending up with reliable results is a sign that we are gaining in knowledge and skill, but getting there is often most of the fun - including the dreaming stage, the beholding of some material that compels us, either ineffably or viscerally. The Japanese shirting was doing that to me. Both the ochre version from which I made my petticoat, and this striped blue and neutral. They kept talking to me, insistently, requiring that I pay attention to them. I realized the striped one reminded me of indigo and persimmon, natural dye colors that are commonly seen in Japanese textiles.

I bought a remnant, again (when I can’t think of a concrete project for a fabric, I wait for it to be a remnant, then bring it home as a pet.) This sat in my basket, on view, for a while. Here it is with a Japanese indigo dyed piece my husband bought me while we lived in Japan (late 1990’s). It is loosely woven asa fabric - asa is a generalized term for native plant fibers, from what I can tell. The base yarn is colored with persimmon (kaki) and overdyed with indigo, in a way that involves folding and dipping.

Striped Japanese shirting and indigo/persimmon dip-dyed plant fiber cloth, detail.

Large scarf made of plant fiber dip-dyed with tapered horizontal stripes of indigo in alternating light and dark tones. Creased from being folded….

I found that I had enough for a sleeveless bodice, and began looking for a skirt. Enter one more beloved Thai sarong. This is apparently the year for me to use my Thai sarong fabrics. I wore this one quite a bit. It was a functional garment already, and had been sewn into a tube. When I put it next to the Japanese shirting and knew they belonged together, it struck me that this fabric also had a natural dye referent - it reminds me of madder and indigo. It’s not even a true batik, just a print, but I suspect that people dye and print commercial fabrics with colors that are traditionally pleasing, consciously or unconsciously hearkening back to natural dyes.

Print sarong, showing underside. Intricate batik-style patterns in shades of pink/brown and indigo blue, with black and white highlights.

Button band of sewn bodice, with 19th century China buttons in blue and white. These are my first machine sewn buttonholes, ever.

I don’t have to go far to find examples of madder and indigo among my fibers and fabrics. They are my favorites, and make their way into the stash with ease.

Madder-dyed wool spinning in progress, on a Peruvian spindle. I dyed the fiber in a workshop with Local Color Fiber Studio of Bainbridge Island. The weaving underneath I made with my rigid heddle loom, two shades of indigo cotton from Laos.

Working with these colors and fabrics is the joyful part - placing them next to each other, seeing how they communicate and what they have to tell me. Being able to wear what I make with the fabric, practicality meets delight. I made a sleeveless Hinterland dress which may serve as an undergarment until it gets warm out again.

Detail of dress, Japanese striped shirting on top, China buttons, Thai sarong on the bottom. Soothing blue and muddy cinnamon….

Another example of persimmon (painted onto stencil paper for use in stitch resist dyeing) and indigo (handmade paper made and dyed by Laura Mayotte.)

Natural colored flax yarn, spun by me, indigo dyed hemp yarn from Rainshadow Fibers, a Japanese bag made from plant fiber and dyed with indigo and possibly persimmon, but maybe walnut, underneath.

I’ve done that thing again, where I write about another topic and put it on a different page. Still thematic to the textile riches of my life, a contemplation of a camel trapping in the threads page.

time of two robes, part 2

I call the shelter-in-cloth robe Inhabit, and I call this one Flourish. This one, made from the Sew Liberated Lichen Duster pattern, is more suited for showing off, going out, being seen.

I challenge anyone to resist twirling in this duster.

May still have the stay-at-home face, but I’m working on that.

While I love to wear a big huge square or rectangular garment, there is something to be said (in this my home culture), for the slightly more fitted and tailored look. I mean, here’s a beautiful huipil that I wear an awful lot. I got it at the weaving guild auction, knowing it was handspun cotton, and later found out from Charlotte Kwon at Maiwa that it’s from Oaxaca, Mexico.

The Oaxaca huipil stack, Maiwa collection, Vancouver, B.C.

Backstrap woven cloth, being normally not very wide, is suited to big huipils, ponchos, and mantas made of panels joined together. This one is three panels wide. It feels so secure to be completely swathed in handspun cotton, giving away no hint of actual body shape. I dream of hanging out with these women in Chicahuaxtla, and trying out the floor-length huipil. (Instagram link, because otherwise I’m only getting Pinterest, and I’d rather send you to Ana Paula Fuentes.)

But the Lichen Duster! It’s a completely different approach, very distinctively shaped pattern pieces, meticulous and fascinating construction. It’s kind of the opposite of the Cut my Cote zero waste method - however, I did discover that the pieces are narrow enough (apart from sleeves and upper back) that one could use handwoven fabric of 14” wide to make most of them. Exciting! Food for thought!

And since I intended to use fabric I already owned for this first duster, it was a process of matching fabric to pattern piece, based on size. I started by printing and cutting out the pattern pieces (size 12, for roominess,) so that I could see exactly what was needed. I rummaged around in my bins, prioritizing some Indian khadi (handspun cotton) first. I have a large but dwindling amount of this, but individual pieces are not all that big. At the time of collection, I was buying a meter or so of each, just going for variety not quantity. I actually had to piece the two front khadi panels to get long enough sections - those center front pattern pieces wrap behind the neck to form the collar, so they’re long.

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Close up of two khadi fabrics. The upper left piece is used in my duster (from the pockets to the hem, side front.) The other one plays a bit part in the Inhabit robe.

As soon as I saw the dark brown Thai sarong in my bin, I knew it had to be used for the gores, at least. Since living in Thailand in 2004, I’ve used, worn, and given away a number of different sarongs, but this one I always held onto as fabric, because it’s so striking. The audacious color combination - deep chocolate, with a rusty dark cinnamon brown, and bright fuchsia, black, white, and taupe - it had to be featured someday. Letting those flowers peek out at the base of the skirt sounded perfect, and as it happened, I needed this for the center back skirt as well, since other fabric pieces were not big enough.

A little more rummaging produced a very large piece of cloth, one I’d dyed myself during the year I studied with Stanley Pinckney at SMFA in Boston. I want to link you, but Stanley is not an online-presence kind of man. Utterly brilliant as a teacher, he created an ideal space for cooking up far-ranging ideas, through the medium of Adire, resist dye techniques as practiced by the Yoruba of western Nigeria.

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Triptych made in Stanley’s class, using the eleko technique of wax resist. The wax was applied with wood blocks, which I cut and made myself. Stanley convinced me to make a “negative space” block, with the pattern removed from the block, to add depth and texture to the resist dyed design. The middle panel has an underdye of elo, the technique of binding and wrapping.

I could go on indefinitely about Stanley and his class, and his shipshape studio, and the slides he showed weekly of all his former students’ work, and the way he asked, “Are you plotting and scheming??” with a wicked grin on his face. Rarely have I encountered such unequivocal support and such systematic, organized teaching by someone passionate, focused and full of love for the work. So when I put this eleko fabric into this robe, it speaks all of that. It reminds me of how much I loved that studio, and how hard I worked that year. This piece was not ‘finished,’ but in its current state of pale lavender with sage green and the blush of pink, it somehow harmonizes with the fabrics I’d chosen. And it was plenty big enough for sleeves and (almost) upper back, so that brought me to here.

I laid the fabrics out, mimicking the robe shape, and was satisfied that this would work, visually. After that came the focused effort. It was remarkable how this project fit my needs at this stage of pandemic, isolation, mourning, outrage, and so on. Earlier, I needed the amorphous pulling together of cloth that was the Inhabit robe - no plan, just basting and adding stitches, solving problems in a loose, musing, stream-of-consciousness way, knowing I could always backtrack and take stitches out. At this point, I was ready for some step-by-step, intricate puzzle work. I’d read the pattern, looked at the tutorials, and even sampled all the different seams that might be used, so I was fluent and prepared. There was something appealing about doing everything just right, honing skills and being meticulous. It engaged my mind in an all-consuming way, which was a different sort of productive ‘escape,’ or let’s say alternative to the spiral of worry, despair or frustration that daily threatens. Because I don’t think making clothes is running away from anything - more of a running towards the priorities I wish to see reinforced. This project made me learn, think, and do in a very satisfying way.

Intersection of khadi and sarong, at pocket and front gore. The pocket construction is so cool.

And a secret, hidden fabric on the inside of the pockets - a good way to stretch the featured ones, since this part is folded in. I used a lighter weight fabric, to reduce the bulk of pocket seams.

I used FOUR different seams on this baby: flat felled for the back of the skirt, bound seams on the front, French seam to join back skirt and upper back, and faux-French for the sleeve join. Only a small amount of hand-sewing, on those sleeve seams, otherwise my trusty machine was a trooper.

And as I was saying at the beginning, a more tailored look. This pattern is so classy. I was pretty sure it would allow me to use a variety of fabrics while avoiding a radically eccentric, motley effect. I wanted it all to hang together and be convincing, and the structure helps with that. The collar, for example. With interfacing, the collar and front edge are nice and crisp. I didn’t even mess with the collar during this photo shoot - it behaved itself without intervention. Belted, this is a functional dress, suited for working with my hands and puttering around, which is key. I don’t need garments I can’t work in. A scarf was handy for immediate belting, and I’m working on a backstrap woven belt, using some sock yarn as warp.

Well, that’s about it. I may have forgotten things I wanted to say, and please ask questions in the comments if you have any. I’m quite sure I’ll be making this again - there are so many possibilities. Oh, the front facing cloth was over-dyed with walnuts, back in May. I collected them last fall and let them steep all winter long (the neglect-on-the-deck technique.) Shown below is my little Dye All the Things Walnut fest. The deflected double weave is a scarf made by Pauline Verbeek-Cowart, an esteemed weaver, teacher, and good friend. It was a snowy white, which was beautiful but I’d never wear it. Now it’s ready-to-wear, and will go with my Flourish duster! And hey, it’s almost time to gather more walnuts….

One more thing: if you live in the United States, please check that you’re registered to vote, please vote, and if you want to help ensure the process, here’s a website called Power the Polls.

time of two robes, part 1

Back in April (insert joke about how long ago that was), Jude Hill had this concept of ‘shelter in cloth as place.’ A compelling idea. I haven’t been hand-stitching much lately, but was drawn to the project of finding some cloth and living with and in it. I have plenty of cloth worthy of that task. I thought of the word inhabit.

This is the robe, Inhabit

This is a Lichen duster - will post more soon!

Jude’s paper doll measuring method and rectangle base provided an easy way to get started.

This post, where Jude plays with the plain rectangle as robe base, and all its many possibilities, gave me a way in. My own lifelong fabric stash provided the rest.

The robe was built from the inside out, because the first cloth I knew I wanted to live in was silk charmeuse dyed by Laura Mayotte, aka indigonightowl. It was in a gift packet years ago, and I’d always wanted to wear it close, but hadn’t come up with the right garment. So this piece became the inner lining, embracing my shoulders and back, full of the good energy of indigo and friendship.

You’d need to feel this - it’s like water, so soft.

A robe! A cloth with neck opening, tra-la…

The main outer rectangle is more silk. I know, so indulgent, all this silk. But I owned it already, this time from my art school dyeing course with Stanley Pinckney, who required us to work huge, practicing resist dye techniques on 5 x 8 foot pieces of cloth, in order to immerse and become proficient. I had a large piece of silk shantung that was dyed with a wonderful color - Procion MX “Pearl Grey”, which turns mauve on this silk, overlaid with a couple of long stripes. Like Laura’s indigo piece, this cloth was already soft as if worn for years, mellowed by the dyeing process. I took Jude’s advice and tried it on from the earliest stages.

I immediately basted these fabrics together, and they let me know right away that this was good.

Cutting open the front from the neck down.

The next thing I knew for sure was that the front would cross over in the Asian style, and Hmong batik hemp would be the collar. The extra piece for the front was again silk, from a dye workshop at the first fiber festival I ever attended, in Sedalia, Missouri. We used resist and stamping techniques with natural dye extracts (I forgot the teacher’s name but she used to own Table Rock Llamas in Colorado Springs.) These precious and unique fabrics had rested in my storage bins for years, awaiting their time. The Hmong batik came from the night market in Chiang Mai, Thailand, around 1998. Well-worn and still pleated from its life as a skirt, this cloth is not only soft and strong, but full of the skill of ages.

I stitched the long seams with the machine, but for the collar I worked by hand. Dwelling with this robe meant slowing down, which was part of the appeal. Of course the world in general was slowed by the stay-at-home orders, but my mind still buzzed, and I was not inclined to sit still. Once I started the robe, I found that it gave me pleasant problems to solve, questions and puzzles to occupy my mind deep in the night, a welcome change from random worrying and wondering about questions with no answers. I’d lie there and think about how to attach a button, or what fabrics might be best for the next step. Basting and hand sewing also gave me the chance to admire these fabrics which had been dormant for so long, like the glorious Japanese printed silk I used for the lower half of the lining.

I put a button on both sides, so it can be worn inside out.

The stitching and patchwork has gone slowly, after the initial rush of choosing and assembling the large pieces. I’ve added pockets (obviously essential, as soon as I started wearing it), and select bits of special fabric, even thoughts and hopes.

Another sample of Laura Mayotte’s indigo work became a medallion on my shoulder.

Embroidering a word makes you think about it more.

For the back of my neck, a place of vulnerability I want to transform.

This one is certainly not yet “done”, and I don’t know if it will be, ever. I’m sure there will always be something else to stitch. It’s also unrefined - very little of the stitching is as precise or tidy as this embroidered label. Some of it feels almost desperate - but such are the moods flowing through and around me lately. The main guiding idea is still to inhabit the cloth, and the robe is serving that purpose, welcoming me to wrap up on a cool morning. I reinforced the lower back lining with Japanese cotton, wanting some strength in there for outdoor sitting.

This robe may be silk, but it’s not meant for disengaging from the world. I wear it like anything else, for wandering in the wooded garden, for spinning and general household puttering. It is a stay-at-home garment, but that’s not the same as stagnant. It’s a reminder that the skill of my own hands can keep me company and guide a troubled mind, while reinforcing a supportive place in which to dwell. In my wanderings I have gathered and made these fabrics, and now that I’m staying home for a while, I inhabit them.

Basting the layers allowed me to keep wearing the robe as it was made. Sleeves of handspun cotton khadi from India, which are shaped because the fabric was cut for pant legs.

And yes, I did say two robes. I made a Lichen Duster - and it’s done, too! Shown up at the top of the post. But it deserves its own post with lots of photos. Coming soon….