All of my last month has been adjusting to new rhythms. It has simply been time to focus up.

The last two years have been full of work. I might even say they are the hardest I have ever worked. But most of it has been internal—healing and working to understand myself better. Or it has been about creating the space to work—literally creating a studio or figuring out how I work best. It has been good work. I am happy.

And yet still I have felt like I am stuttering, unable to move with my own wind. I have felt absent of momentum—as like to stop as to start.

I feel that now is the time to start building momentum. I love my peace. I love my solitude. I want my momentum to help me keep them, not to rush me away from it. I simply wish to fall asleep each night knowing I have done the work in front of me. I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job of that.

To that end this collection of work represents not just last night but many of nights which make up my last month.

Heart Mountain Regalia

I’ve been stitching on my heart mountain regalia for several weeks now. I do about 30 minutes most nights as I wind down before sleep. Its my first ever quilting project and so its taken a lot of stopping and starting.

I decided on a piece and fold method to get a more natural edge and because it seemed the easiest to understand. I get so hot when I move these days, and this is a shirt to dance in so I decided to do it with out batting or fusing. Which I think is the right decision, but also has meant that I’ve had to learn how to keep to pieces of fabric in place over each other.

The first step was sewing heart mountains silhouette onto the snowy blue I’m using as backing. Both of these fabrics were quilters cotton with minimal stretch so there were minimal problems here. I’m really happy with how recognizable it is.

Then the next step is to sew this back piece to the shirt. I decided to do this next for a couple of reasons, despite the fact that traditional method of quilting would have me piecing it all together before placing it on the backing. For one I want the stitches on the pieces to go through to the shirt and help secure it all in place. But I also did it second because I knew it would be the hardest part.

And I was correct. Getting the first seam together was easy, and I love the look of it. But the linen of the shirt has more stretch than that of the quilters cotton, and because of the way the shirt makers designed the yoke, its stretch runs against the grain of the rest of the shirt. Not to mention the side seems are ruched.

I’ve had to do and redo the seams on the side and top of the piece more than 10 times now. I probably will have to do the right side and right top seams 2 or 3 more times but, knock on wood, I think I finally got how it wants to sit.

You can see above the blue marked seams are finished in what I think is their final state. Wrinkles are natural as the shirt is loos right now, but don’t worry, I iron each seam as I sew it.

Next step will be adding large sections of highlights and shadows to the snowy landscape with the below fabrics. The dark tree tops and shadows of the rocks will be added with shashiko thread near the end.

The shadow fabric is actually fine dots of green and dark blue on cream which will catch the blue of the sky, the dark blue of the houses i am going to sew on, and the green of the hospital. And the buffalo fabric I think is most appropriate for a mountain called the Buffalo Heart.

Research

This month represents the first time I served as a researcher for someone else. I have for a long time been proud ability to turn up unexpected information in a few days. Books and databases and articles and, in fact, the whole of human knowledge is merely a web and if know how moving through it is as fun as anything.

But I’ve never put together a research dossier for someone else. I learned a lot. It turns out, to nobodies surprise, that researching for someone else requires more careful documentation and more consideration of what is useful that doing it for my self. I’ll probably write up more about research dossiers when J. sends me on my next mission to work for him.

But the important part is I found that doing as work drained none of the joy from it. If I could find a job doing it full time, I would be so happy.

The video my work appears in is below. Made by my partner JD Perrin. Its fantastic. I think you should check it out just for its insight, but I know both of us would appreciate every watch, every like, every comment. They each help him break through the algorithm, and get closer to making money from the vital cultural work he is doing.

More Tomorrow,

Weaver