Slowing Down with Soul

linen napkin eco-dyed with tea

A Different Direction

Over the past week, I’ve reconnected with Jude Hill’s Spirit Cloth blog.  It’s a soulful place where I take refuge when the daily noise gets too loud.  The texture, layers, and spirit cloth draw me in.  A place where slowness and contemplation is honored.

I’ve taken 2 of Jude’s online classes in the past couple of months (patchwork beasts and cloth2cloth) and signed up for 4 more.  I’m inspired by the look and feel of worn/used cloth, natural dyed fabrics, and texture of hand stitching.  I want to learn more.

In cloth2cloth, Jude teaches us how to weave cloth.  Below are the first couple of woven blocks I’ve made, so far only basted with an invisible basting stitch, but ready for much more weaving, embellishment and quilting:

woven block 1 (my own hand-dyed fabrics and some prints, background is one of my hand-dyed fabrics)

woven block 2

I’ve also been reading India Flint’s book, Eco Colour.  I used principles that India teaches in this book to do my first eco-dyed cloth which I wrote about in this post.  This past weekend, I dyed a couple of cotton/linen napkins using only tea.  One is at the top of this post, the other here:

cotton napkin dyed with tea

Unwrapping the bundled fabrics is magical, revealing the range of bold to subtle marks and patterns.

I don’t know where all this is headed.  I just know its the right path for me right now – it makes my soul happy.