Tag: ladies

• All Her Stages!

  
  I found the black,white, red border fabric and was very drawn to it.  I then picked a few more that would accent it nicely…and added a few from my stash.  When I completed the stripes, I brought it upstairs and some of the whites were "off whites" and so I set it aside.  

  Then yesterday morning I thought, I will finish it, so what if there are two shades of white…man, my past has many shades…I can use it as if I planned to have different shades.  I then went and added the thin stripes and the flowered border.  I loved it, when I felt it wasn't supposed to match perfectly.

  
  As I was working to complete the background, yellow came to me…I knew I had to add yellow, and so I did.  I had it completed this far, when I stepped away from it to do the pricing on the other quilts.

  When I seen the stages of my lady…I knew what I wanted on this quilt….all of them.

  And so I created them this afternoon.  With a few tweaks to the original 3 dresses, and an addition of a few more….here is the completed design.  I still have to machine quilt in the borders, but the composition is done, which is my favorite part. Once the ladies are quilted and complete….My real fun is over.  Then it is just doing the finishing touches.

  
  I was pleased with the way it all flowed.  It amazes me how a spark, a thought, a span of time passes, a new slant comes in….and voila, a new Lady quilt is born.

  
   I loved the red polkadot fabric.  This was the start…the awakening, the seed of the Lady!

  
  And a closer view of the rest…

  
  The progression….and the flung back attitude of confidence, strength and knowing. Love her…in all her stages!

  May 6, 2012

  art, ladies, quilts, self, therapy, transformation

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• My Art Shows my Inner Changes.

  I had put off pricing my quilts, for the task seemed overwhelming. Today I asked a special friend of mine to give me hand, to see if we could find a respectable price that our local market would hold, yet honor the energy and Art of each piece. 

  The pile of twenty was quickly moved into smaller categories of size and composition.  From that point, we appraised its energy, story and fabric content (hand-dyed vs store bought) and found a price. 

  Once the prices were in range, I then went to work on giving each a name and brief description.

  These quilts had been set aside as quilts I could sell, for they didn't seem to have what I called my story line or were part of my healing Art Therapy, or had a bit of me in them. Yet when I began to give them titles and sit and stare at each one, all are part of my journey and in fact they hold energies of joy, feelings of sorrow, weight of tangled confusion, brilliant wisdom, subtle nuances and wistful growth, sisterhood, sister friends, soul sisters, etc…all carry a part of my healing, the past and the future.

  I could also see how my lady started.

  She was small. 

  She lacked movement and energy.

  She was drowned out by the color and design upon which she stood.

  As the years went on, she grew animated with movement, even her sorrow was pronounced…and her self worth blatantly evident in her size.,

  What I didn't expect from this collection of quilts is to see so much of me…and to feel the small almost unrecognizable me and the how the background energy moved into the Lady.

  Below are some from what I call my personal story line, that will show you how I saw myself back in 2005.

  
  She is one of the first ladies to emerge…Her size in comparison to the background really hit me.  How small I saw myself…insignificant almost. 

  
  Actually this one came before the previous one, for she doesn't even have hair… The writing in the quilting says, "Freedom to be free".  At the time it was a dream, a thought…a someday desire.  An unknown feeling. And the freedom seemed to be around me and I was trying to catch it.

  
  What struck me about these dancing ladies is the empty head…first I thought how sad, and then I thought, how delightful, to be empty of beliefs and thoughts, to be wide open. A clean slate…a new me. (this one was one of the first lady quilts to sell)

  In looking below at one of the latest quilts, one I pulled out of the pile going to Marquette, (I wasn't ready to let her go and she seems to be truly apart of my storyline) you can see how the lady and the background are equally as bright and infused with energy.  A balance…I am no longer smaller than my surroundings.

  
  

  So, no matter which quilt I have done, there you will find me…a snippet of my journey, a bit of inner wisdom and knowing…without words, you see me in the shape, color and design.  Wow, Art really is revealing.

  
  The description I wrote for this quilt, titled, "Comfortable Wisdom"…is, 

    "She rests easy in knowing who she is, where she has been…no regrets.  She  fully accepts the past and is at peace with the present…a lover of reality."  

  You simply can't hide in Art…it sneaks into every aspect of what you create.  

  As odd as it sounds, the more time I spend with my art, the more I understand it and the more in awe I become.  While playing with the fabrics and designs I am blind to the subtle blaring messages that are screaming at me in silence.  Just amazing to not see yourself…it is a slow progression.  I changed as my art changed…or my art shows my inner changes.

  
  

  May 5, 2012

  abuse, Art & Quilts, awareness, creating, healing, journey, ladies, self, sexual, wisdom

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• A wooden Lady

  It came to me while writing today, that I used to be a rock.  A solid unmoving sturdy chunk of ‘being okay’ no matter what Rock; that you couldn’t shake my good nature.

   

  I withstood false promises and never showed my disappointment, I relied on the unreliable to come through and never once stood up and walked away.  I lived for years and years being the rudder in lives that seemed to be adrift and in need of my steadiness, getting splashed upon and caught in the undertow, yet remained standing with them.

   

  I somehow felt so needed and secure to be their rock.

   

  A rock. That was my role.

   

  Not partner, friend, mutual exchanging, but a rock.

  Something to stand upon, sit upon reliable always being there, for them…my needs, thoughts, feelings hidden under the solid hard cover.

   

  Looking back at my rock days, being a rock star perhaps in a sick and twisted way, I see that I had no sense to move out of the way, that I didn’t have legs to move me, like a rock I waited for some one to come along and pick me up and throw me out of the relationship I was in.

   

  It literally never occurred to me to move.

   

  Six and a half years later I am good at moving, I am fluid like a stream, I show my emotions and voice my feelings, I am no longer stuck in the hailstorm of others peoples lives, I respond in kind to what comes my way, I move, I bend and turn…free.

   

  I watch now other rock ladies and witness the sickening way they try to control things that are out of their control, like an alcoholics wife the promises never take root.

   

  It is weird that the rock changes color depending upon who they are with, like a huge living breathing mood ring…they fill in the weak spot, overlook the negative and bring in the balance of what is missing.  It never crosses their minds to leave, to turn and get out.

   

  What I felt was a solid rock of good nature, was actually a solid rock victim.

   

  The difference of how you feel inside filling up the low spots in a relationship, like you are helping, adding, growing, when if fact you are helping them remain less.

   

  At first glance it seems like a good deed, that you are being so accommodating, but in actuality you are enabling them to treat you poorly.

   

  It is like you are helping them slap your face again and again, while you sit as a rock.

   

  I was proud of how much I could withstand, see it as my strength, and all it showed was how little I thought of myself.

   

  I was a rock…I was an island….isn’t that a line in a song?

   

  What continues to shock me is how backwards I had everything…sitting as a rock never moving, being so loyal…like a wooden lady.

   

   

   

   

  June 30, 2011

  abuse, choices, frozen, ladies, unmoving, victim

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• Anything in Return.

   

  As I walked into the Apartment Building yesterday, carrying my mail, two ladies standing in front of the wall of mailboxes met me; we all seemed to want to be in the same spot.

   

  They are knocking on the door of the lady who lives directly across from the mailboxes, in fact when I am delivering mail, no one can get by.

   

  So, the two ladies flank the door and my back is to the door as it opens answering their knock.   The woman says, “oh it is you,” to me, and then she sees the other ladies.

   

  As I delivered mail, they delivered Jehovah’s message.

   

  It had occurred to me earlier that morning that people can get lost behind the words, that words can become a mask or face to hide behind, that you then become the words.

   

  Words. 

   

  I wondered if these ladies could separate themselves from Jehovah’s words.

   

  If you dropped the words of Jehovah where would they go?

  Who are they behind this whitewall of words? 

   

  Would they not just be two nice ladies visiting?

   

  I left so grateful that I have no message to deliver, no one to save and no one I had to convince to follow me.  And I can just be a kind smiling lady delivering, but not expecting anything in return.

   

   

   

   

   

   

  June 22, 2011

  delivering, jehovah’s witness, ladies

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• The Artist Way.

  December 1, 2004, I began writing Morning Pages, a tool in the book, “The Artist Way,” A Course in Discovering and Recovering your Creative Self, by Julia Cameron.

  Here Julia explains the Morning Pages.

  “There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages. These daily meanderings are not meant to be Art. Or even writing. I stress that point to reassure the nonwriters working with this book. Writing is simply one of the tools. Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”

  “The Morning Pages are not supposed to sound smart – although sometimes they might. Most times they won’t and nobody will ever know except you. Nobody is allowed to read your morning pages except you. And you shouldn’t even read them yourself for the first eight weeks or so. Just write three pages, and stick them into an envelope. Or write three pages in a spiral notebook and don’t leaf back through. Just write three pages and three more the next day.”

  “Although occasionally colorful, the morning pages are often negative, frequently fragmented, often self-pitying, repetitive, stilted or babyish, angry or bland – even silly sounding. Good!”

  “All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down stands between you and your creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the car, the weird look in your lover’s eye – this stuff eddies through your consciousness and muddies our days. Get it on the page.”
  Julia Cameron

  Six and a half years later I read my first Morning Pages, and she is absolutely correct, they are rambling, fragmented, petty and all over the board, but I recall enjoying them.

  Sitting down with a notepad, a bunch of well sharpened pencils and writing three pages worth. Let me tell you, you do have to scratch and sift to find three pages worth.

  It is amazing what pours out of you once you begin, “Good Morning Pages….”

  I had a problem calling them pages I kept calling them papers. Nonetheless, I wrote. I wrote mindless chitchat for three days, and then it was discovered that my father was a pedophile on Dec 4th and there shows a break of about a week and a half and then I picked up a pencil and wrote again.

  The Morning Pages became journals and the journals changed into a blog, but the writing continued, the exploration and discovery and recovery deepened…

  This tool literally saved me as I walked into deep waters of life, however, I feel I want to go back and pick up where I left off, doing The Artist Way. Reading the book and doing the Twelve Week Exercises.

  As I begin again, I have invited a bunch of Lady Friends to join me…and I am excited I do have a few takers! Anyone can join…there is room for everyone!

  I am excited to begin again, as I was back then, for I felt I was idling along in life on pause or repeat perhaps and was feeling like I needed to open myself up wider…to grow or stretch, to expand my life to include more artist like things, classes or outings etc…and I feel that again.

  I am once again stepping it up a level or kicking it up a notch, expanding my horizons, using this one life and experiencing more that it has to offer, adding to me some new and different things.

  I will go back to handwriting the three pages each morning. I can’t wait to see what happens. I have missed the sharpened pencils and the exercise of writing without a thought…and even more excited to have Lady Friends who will join me on The Artist Way.

  

  June 14, 2011

  art, artist, Cameron, discovering, expanding, horizons, journey, Julia, ladies, life, quilts, self, The, way, writing

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• Not the Tail…

  When one person in a relationship changes, the relationship changes, for you are asked to adjust yourself. We are like two moving puzzle pieces that keep losing their shapes and we have to move and work to fit back together.

  I have felt the nerve of my security and found that it is based on sameness.

  It likes looking at the sameness; it likes to see itself in others and is fearful around different views and actions…it gets nervous.

  My security nerve feels more secure when the other person acts, thinks and moves like me, it wants a mirror image, it feel secure there.

  When a person moves in a different direction, I feel they are hearing differently than I, perhaps tuned into a different radio station, and dancing to a completely different song.

  My history on group movement, and being so alike, has made my security nerve accustomed to a bunch of people moving like a flock of birds, and it feels uneasy with independent movement.

  This is good to know, that it isn’t that the actions so much that is off, but how I perceive it.

  When you are raised to fit into a group and live nestled in that group, it is really odd to separate and live as a single.

  A single amongst the many…

  An individual doesn’t make you alone; it makes you a single in the bunch of many, a unique expression of humanity.

  My security nerve is okay with me being unique, however, it does seem to register changes within others as well.

  If the changes are empowering and heading towards whole being, I am okay…and actually feel a lift as I cheer them on…but if the changes are someone losing their power, I feel the drain as well.

  My security nerve has to fully separate and become its own, and stop being so co-dependent upon another’s power source.

  My wiring seems to get twisted up, it surges or fails when my boundary between self and other get blurred.

  Where my sense of self leaves my body and is attached inside of another, in one point two seconds, I am clinging to their feelings to find mine.

  When my power of security relies on another, I fail for I am plugged into them and their actions for my peace of mind, and this is insanity.

  This is how I know that a part of me is still co-dependent, for I feel unsettled by your actions, I feel my power surging or failing; I feel the pull and ebb as you move.

  It is incredible and yet frightening to feel the tail of the dog, and not being the dog.

  When I am the tail I have no power, I go where you go and either wag or droop…but can’t steer.

  Life is completely different when you are the dog and not the tail…

  

  March 25, 2011

  co-dependent, detaching, feelings, ladies, life, security, style

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• Success

  Life flows with such ease and delight at times, you feel its divine orchestration, where each small detail you didn’t even know you needed is taken care of.

  I have felt this in getting life lessons, where its painfully easing you into awareness, but my day yesterday was the opposite.

  My day off prompted me to ask three friends to share the day with me, which tripled my joy.

  I was chauffeured and entertained with great conversation, and given different viewpoints as our day unfolded.

  We learned we travel well together; we seemingly flow in similar directions yet with different views, enhancing our experiences by adding a new flavor I myself couldn’t have gotten alone.

  Sampling a small Quilt display to browsing Art books in a Library, Lunch, shopping for fabric, chocolates and clothes, each of us arriving and leaving with what we love.

  The energy of the ladies mingled with the energy of what we saw built within me the desire to be better, to expand my quilting techniques, to explore more, play more, enjoy more, be more.
  The day was much more than I dreamed it would be.

  Thanks Ladies for sharing yourselves so abundantly with me.

  With renewed energy, exciting fabric and filled with ideas, I am ready to play in an Artful way. The first road trip a great success….

  October 12, 2010

  Art road trip, friendship, joy, ladies, quilts, sharing

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