Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Running With the Wolves

I've been feeling out of sorts. It started in about May and was getting worse and worse. For various reasons, I had decided to drop tango completely, but commitments to the community dictated that it couldn't happen until after the middle of September. So I distanced myself emotionally from it instead.

I'm reading the book " Women Who Run With Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Estes is a Jungian therapist and cantadora (storyteller). Each chapter deals with issues deep within a womans psyche using fables found in different cultures. Estes speaks of how women sever themselves from their internal creative force, becoming quiet, good, perfect... fill it whatever word works in your own circumstances.

Reading Este's book, I've realized that the decision to quit tango has severed me from my own internal energy. Via tango, for the first time in my adult life, I was fully connected to myself. Tango fed the artistic creation, which fed the tango, which fed... When one wasn't working, the other was. So, do I restart the tango fire? Or do I walk away from it and find another way to light that fire? Which would be best for who I really am?

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Working with Silk


This piece started with a piece of silk picked up at a thrift store a number of years ago. Although gaudy, it is silk and would have been thrown away if I hadn't taken it home. The fabriholic in me couldn't let that happen. What can I say... I knew something would occur to me, but quilting wasn't what I had in mind at the time.

Silk is interesting to work with. Cottons are predictable when hand appliqued. Raw silk or duponi silk have a similar dynamic to cottons and don't move around, but the fabric I was working with is the lighter weight charmeuse so is very slippery. I fused interfacing to the back (not something that works well with a silk as the heat needed to bond the interfacing is too hot for the silk). Silk does applique easily even though it is slippery and doesn't seem to fray the same way, so it created wonderfully sharp points where I wanted them without the frustrating little bits of thread everywhere.

Now I'm at a loss how to quilt what I would consider the background. I've had several ideas and tossed them, so it sits on my design wall and taunts me. I wish it would talk to me instead.