Oct. 4, 2021, 1:16 p.m.
Quilting is a spell
What other people think of me is none of my business
Monday Monday
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Quilting illuminates the pathway to myself and the way to my ancestors. My chosen ancestors, queer ancestors, the ancestors of my neighbors and how that weaves into my neighborhood. Quilting shows me how to unravel and unlearn, to set aside everything I think I know. To be beholden to absolute mystery.
Quilting and the art of passing the legacy to others is an entry point for me. An entry point into how colonization, shared consciousness, appropriation, dismantling white supremacy in history and storytelling, is all a part of teaching such a complicated lineage of thread. It is an entry point to stay curious and move at a slow pace, rather than pick up the drug of urgency and race to the finish line of completion just for the sake of completion.
Quilting taught me how to stay curious about grandmothers I never met, how to piece together the ideas of partnership and then fold them up and put them away. To be taken out later and unfolded again. Quilting teaches me that most things belong to no one, that we steal and take, and things appear to be ours when they never were.
Quilting is about abandoning the words “not finished” and instead using “still working on it.” If I am not actively putting a needle through three layers does that mean it’s not finished? Or simply that I haven’t picked it up today?
Quilting is shape shifting. Quilting is knowing something could be finished and can change yet again. Quilting is knowing nothing. As soon as you show up thinking you know how it will turn out the less delighted you will be.
Quilting is how I stay out of other people’s business. When I quilt it is a protection spell from when other people are thinking about me. To cut the cord, and cut the tether of connection I no longer desire.
Quilting is how I know I have the tools to keep myself safe and committed to groundlessness. There have been many times in the past year that the sphere around my heart, my practice, my life, my partnership, my day to day, my desires, hasn’t been protected. And no one is in charge of protecting that except for me. To feel the tether of someone else’s anxiety, jealousy, anguish, malice, compare, confusion, longing for what I have - can pull too tight. Every time I snip a thread I say, vanish vanish vanish. May it be me who tends to the cutting. And may the cutting be only a gift and a prayer that the blessings spill out to those who are unconsciously bound.
Quilting is how I get to know my dreams, connect to hopelessness, abandon generosity in an effort to dive into service and gifting without expectation. Quilting is how I learn about what came before other people and what will come after we leave.
Quilting is a spell.
A Quilt is Something Human is a four week course on zoom where you learn to make an improvised quilt from beginning to end. A course where there is no messing up, no rulers, and very few straight lines. You have to know very little to dive in and you hang out with other people ready to cheer you on for the month.
And if you’re like wait I thought we just made blankets … we do we just also … unlearn everything we think we thought we knew and discover more of ourselves and each other and then also make blankets.
MYTHS AND FEARS :
🪡 SEWING MACHINES SCARE ME : Me too! Literally terrifying machines. I absolutely love the free resource YOUTUBE dot com and it can really help you figure it out - you can do it!
〰 I CAN’T SEW A STRAIGHT LINE : Me neither! Come anyways! The gayer the teacher the less straight the lines will be
🧠 I AM SCARED I WON’T BE ABLE TO FIGURE IT OUT : You will! I’m really good at showing you how to do things you don’t think you can do
⏺ IF I DON’T FINISH A QUILT BY WEEK FOUR I MIGHT HATE MYSELF : You might but probably not because we will cheer you on. Sometimes for show and tell people hold up a piece of fabric and say how wild and beautiful life is and we all cry!
🎨 I DON’T UNDERSTAND ART OR IMPROVISATION : Part of the fun is we’ll discover this together as a group
💰 I’M NOT WORTHY OF THE INVESTMENT IN MYSELF : My dad says give a person a quilt and they’ll stay warm forever, teach a person to make a quilt and many will stay warm forever. It’s not just an investment in you but in all of us
Week one we have guest teacher Christi Johnson, week three guest speaker Anisha Chirmule (who has made over EIGHTY quilts since learning in January!)
📐📏〰🤍PAYMENT PLANS! SCHOLARSHIPS FOR BIPOC STUDENTS!
If you want to read why class is so fun go here for the ALUMNI PAGE. The above quilt and below testimonial are some words about quilt class from Melissa Word
This quilt class is soul medicine. You will indeed learn some technical skills, but really this experience is nourishment for a deeper, more essential part of yourself.
AQISH revived my creative fire and offered an intimacy within an online community I wasn't expecting. Don't even get me started on the ancestral communion that goes down by engaging in this ancient practice of textile tending--HELLO! You want that. Following and investing in the small, inner voice that said ~mmm this quilting thing is inexplicably calling my name~ was a gift I continue to thank myself for daily.
The unknown! The human body! Mystery! How do you fall more in love? How sacred time is! How everything slips away and god protects! A new appreciation of food and vampires and everything that is holy staying holy. New levels of intimacy across time and space. Multi million dollar art collections in places you wouldn’t expect. Love beyond measure. Shattered expectations. Newness of self. Phone as a hell portal and praying for god to take away what stands in the way of my usefulness.
Sing It From the Mountain Tops: The Women Reclaiming Cholita Identity in Bolivia
In my continued effort to not look for god in my phone I gave my social media passwords away after a few weeks of thinking it would be a good idea to have them again.
STORIES I TELL ABOUT NEEDING PASSWORDS : “I flow more when I make content and don’t have to text it to someone else to post. My stories are better. I can be funnier this way in videos”
Taking my passwords back is always me thinking I will be more in control of my life if I know exactly what else is happening in everyone else’s world and can constantly express parts of myself and maybe then just then I will feel safe.
I don’t want to be funny on an app and I don’t want to know what literally anyone is doing that isn’t in front of me other than maybe 2 people on any given day. I want to have fun when I teach, with the people I love who stand before me, with myself dancing alone, in my newsletter, perhaps the occasional caption. But the more I show up to an app hoping I will find the kind of safety and power I can only find from within or god - I am in a trap that is so fucking backwards it continues to baffle me. Which means the promises are coming true because I intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle me
It means I am fucking free of the spell of pain and self pity I cast upon myself - a self I have worked hard to love to the 4th dimension and back. AND it means I THINK I miss information. After the experiment of being deactivated for four months this year I know this isn’t true. This is a lie I tell myself to trick myself into going back to using social media as a drink. And what I know about drinks is one is too many and a hundred is never enough.
I get exactly the information I need from other places. And every time I return to myself and my integrity this way - I am free I am free I am free. To witness what is in front of me and to choose it. And to be wholly free of not knowing who is witnessing me moment to moment, a juicy invitation to witness myself.
Many Blessings
⌇⋰ email : info@marleegrace.space