The Call From Deep Within

There is something larger than self, that we either mangle or make significant. Dante

According to James Hollis these are the stages of our common developmental journey:

1. One is called to the next stage, to a task.
2. The task that each of us is to address is different, the summons to individual personhood.
3. Such tasks pull us out of our comfort zones.
4. In these moments, we risk inflation, as much as intimidation.
5. We are summoned forth redeeming values that has been lost or repudiated through the adaptations of the society. These must be revisited, integrated, lived, in order to bring healing to the earth or trigger the next stage in our personal development toward wholeness.
6. Flight from this restorative task, as well as the honest experience of exile, will bring retribution, neurosis, repressed power and energy.
7. The pathology that arises from any flight from the task is necessary to get out attention.
8. Suffering is the requisite for consciousness and recovery.
9. Homecoming is the goal, but not a geographic home out there or a comforting theology or psychology but a healed relationship with self integrating all parts of the soul and its journey to allow spontaneous generosity in every circumstance.

Failure to incorporate these challenges, tasks, losses into our lives means we have not yet accepted the full package life brings to us. Everything given to us is lost and redeemed by us through more conscious affirmations and actions of values that we continually uphold and serve.

Notes of Appreciation

Hi Louise,
The tallit just came. Oh my goodness! It is so beautiful and so Jonah! Rick and I are thrilled. Actually, we are more than thrilled—we are so moved by your work. Thank you so much. The denim tote is adorable.
Thanks, Bobbi

Dear Louise,
I received my original SilkDenim Bag on Friday and I have already used it twice. I love the bag and the creativity that went into its formation. Thank you so much.! And please know I will think of you every time I use my tote.
Martha

These potholders awesome! Wonderful craftsmanship and they are great to use. Amazing design to slide your hand in the pocket. A funky way to stylishly recycle. Even my husband liked them! Can’t wait to purchase more. They would make great gifts! Kisber

This quilt is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made! I enjoy reading under it, watching TV under it and sleeping under it. It’s visually interesting and has garnered many positive comments from family and friends. The quality is great and the comfort it offers is incomparable. I want another one! James

Thank you! We received your quilt and table runner today. Both are beautiful! The colors are a surprise, since each is different from the sample shown on Etsy. We love the way they turned out! They match our dining room and bedroom even better than we hoped. March

Upcycle Extreme

One of the biggest problems when deconstructing jeans for SilkDenim projects is what to do with all of the unused zippers? It would be a crime to throw them into the land fill but often it requires more time and energy that it’s worth to make something reusable from them.

Thus the assignment was to combine multiple zippers with left over denim and tee-shirt remnants into an attractive, useful, and innovative bag.

This turned into a very technically sophisticated construction. Each zipper is a closed compartment, one building on the next from the bottom up. Next an interesting raw edge on a back piece of denim that gets a pocket and a waist button and finally a cotton tee-lining. The strap is deconstructed and reconstructed waistbands and then the whole piece challenges the machine (and its operator) with it’s many layers until with great organization, patience and resolve, everything comes into one amazingly brilliant SilkDenim iPad-Plus Carrying Bag.

Directions For The Upcycled Denim Cube

Step One: Gather about 20 pairs of baby jeans.

Step Two: Deconstruct the jeans into 6″ strips.

Step Three: Build 6 blocks starting with a 6″ center and building out to 5 rows across and 5 rows down:

Step Four: For the last row of the 6th side, incorporate the snaps of the inner leg seam from one of the jeans.

Step Five: Construct the cube, right sides together.

Step Six: Open snaps and turn right sides out. Stuff with stuffed animals and pillow inserts.

Step Seven: Relax!

Butterflies

REMEMBER US, FOR WE WERE THE CHILDREN WHOSE DREAMS AND LIVES WERE STOLEN AWAY. BARBARA SONEK

I watched the ZooKeeper’s Wife last night. In this touching story, one of the holocaust victims is represented and then remembered by a Butterfly pin that she gives to the ZooKeeper’s Wife as she is leaving her to escape. Butterflies are a powerful symbol of transformation, delicate and beautiful but fragile and short lived.

The Butterfly Project opening today at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh uses that same image. Inspired by the poem “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” by Pavel Friedmann, a young Czech living in the Terezin Concentration Camp, the Project is a tribute to the lives of the young people lost in the Holocaust. Over 300 children painted individual butterflies learning about the children lost and invisioning a future using the lessons learned from the Holocaust to create a free, tolerant world.

My artist job was to integrate the butterflies into a meaningful, warm-hearted exhibit. I used red ribbons to attach the butterflies to the quilts. Red ribbons ward off the evil eye, fooling the evil, who is attracted to the red and away from the butterfly. I placed the butterflies in a beautiful landscaped environment and I offer them the blessing we bestow on our children every Shabbat.

The Butterfly Project Pittsburgh Exhibit is on view through December: Mondays,Wednesdays,and Fridays 10:00 a.m.– 2:00 p.m. Let me know what you think!

Pussies Of America Finds A Home

To: Women and Girls Foundation
100 W. Station Square Drive; Suite 315
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

It is my pleasure to gift you: Pussies Of America; 42”H X 54”H; Recycled denim, tee-shirt knits, Perle Cotton; Hand Embroidery, Hand Appliqué, Machine Piecing; $1200.00; 2017.

Pussies of America was one of over 500 quilts made in response to an open call entitled Threads Of Resistance. Pussies of America references a quilt I made in 1991 as part of The Great American Quilt Festival sponsored by the Museum of American Folk Art. My quilt, Stars of America, featured fifty stars arranged as stars on a flag and highlighted fifty unique American items such as MICKEY MOUSE, ROUTE 66, APPLE PIE, and LEVI JEANS. It is now archived at the Heinz History Center.

For Pussies of America, I replaced the stars with fifty individual pussy hats, representing the handmade pink hats made to provide a unique collective visual statement of support and solidarity for women’s rights, first used during the Women’s March on Washington on November 23, 2016 and now as a continuing sign of protest.

On each hat is a hand-embroidered protest statement taken from the signs held at the march including such statements as: NOT MY PRESIDENT, I AM A WOMAN. WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER?, PUSSIES AND RIGHTS ARE NOT UP FOR GRABS, THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE, I’VE SEEN SMARTER CABINETS AT IKEA, OUR BODY OUR MINDS OUR POWER, and THE WORLD IS WATCHING.

The Power of Seventy

Seventy is made of two perfect numbers, seven- representing perfection and ten- representing the ten commandments and the completeness of The Holy One’s law, symbolizing perfect spiritual order carried out with all power.

Midrash: The Holy One, Who has seventy Names, gave the Torah, which has seventy names, to Israel, which has seventy names (Numbers 11:16), and which originated from seventy people who went down to Egypt with Jacob (Genesis 46:8-27), and was chosen from among seventy nations (Genesis chapter 10), to celebrate seventy holy days in the year (52 Sabbaths and 18 festivals, including the Intermediate Days between Passover and Succot). The Torah was transmitted to seventy elders (Midrash Yelamdeinu), and safeguarded by the Sanhedrin of seventy Sages (Numbers 11:16) … There are seventy facets to the Torah (Zohar, Genesis 36), which was translated into seventy languages to make it understandable to the seventy nations (Sotah 32a), and was engraved on seventy stones after Israel crossed the Jordan (Deuteronomy 27:8) on their way to the Holy Land. Jerusalem, which has seventy names, built the Temple with seventy pillars. On Succot, seventy sacrifices were offered (Numbers 29:13-34) for the sake of the seventy nations of the world who have seventy representatives among the heavenly angels.

Judah Loew ben Bezalel, The Maharal of Prague: The number seven represents the entirety of this natural world, which was created in seven days (six days of creation, completed on the Sabbath). Any number times ten represents its expanded full potential – seventy of something represents all the potential facets of that thing in the natural world.

Rabbi Dovid Feinstein, the son of the late Moshe Feinstein: The seventy languages used by Moses parallel the seventy facets of Torah; each speaks to one of the seventy characteristics with which G-d has populated the world. The number seventy symbolizes that every national trait can be harnessed for holy purposes.

Mark Twain on his seventieth birthday: It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation, and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach – unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right.

Rasiel’s Mantle

Rasiel’s Mantle; 43”H X 63”W X 2” D; Machine Pieced and Hand Quilted Tee-Shirt Remnants, Old Quilt Remnant. 07/2016. $1600.00. Quilt National 2017.

This work is composed of ordinary re-used materials. The archangel, Rasiel, presides over our actions of transforming the knowledge of information and ideas into the wisdom of achieving our deepest levels of understanding. The mantle, like a quilt, serves the practical function of keeping someone warm protecting them from the elements. In this case, it also serves as a symbolic divine representation.

Quilter Extraordinaire

She said she had a lot of t-shirts. I told her I’m okay with that.

I’m used to lots of shirts. I have a well honed system for taking a huge pile of shirts and extracting the logos to condense them into a magnificent, functional, memorable quilt.

Still, she had more shirts than I have ever had presented to me on any previous occasion. I would venture to say representing a huge investment of time and money.

The result, a totally unique solution, one double-sided queen-size quilt for each of the four members of the family.

Life Is The Practice

Do not do a spiritual practice as if your life depended on it. Practice as if it is your life. Let it be empty. Let it be light. Let it be sweet. Let each moment be a mystery that brings you to the next moment.

Empty means without preconception. Without preconception means you are free to follow the natural course of life. The times you feel the most sweetness in your life are those times that are empty: You look at the baby and feel life is wonderful; you watch a dancer and are glad you are human; you learn something new and are completely satisfied by it in and of itself.

Our greatest spiritual practice is not yoga or prayer or meditation. It is life itself. And how we practice life tells us all. If you practice life in order to someday get good enough at it to really live, then you separate yourself from life in a profound way. But if your definition of life is that it has waves of up and down, joy and hardship, ease and discomfort, and if each day you practice empty of preconceptions, ready to wee what life brings, then you will be worthy of the concert stage. The instrument will be your own body, mind, and spirit. The audience will be all of the Buddhas and ordinary people who enjoy watching humans be themselves.

Jason Shulman; The Instruction Manual For Receiving God; page 103