The sisterhood of a local congregation, Tree of Life Or L’Simcha, enlisted my help to create a quilt for the entrance of their building.
We began with a first meeting where everyone brought meaningful pieces of cloth and I presented a PowerPoint talk giving an overview of quilts made with meaning and memory and a variety of the possible designs that would work with their materials.
A planning committee met with me to decide on the size and the pattern. We agreed on 25 diagonally set 14″blocks with 12 triangles and four corners to finish the edges making a finished quilt that is 80″ square.
This past Sunday, eight members of the sisterhood came to the studio and had a great time producing the blocks.
I put everything together and here is our finished quilt:
If someone asks me about Zen, I inevitably refer to the book, Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck.
The late Charlotte Joko Beck and her dharma heirs operate The Ordinary Mind School a non-hierarchical organization that uses an adapted Zen practice free from traditional patriarchal trappings with elements of vipassana meditation and the conscious engagement of emotions.
Everyday Zen is not achieving some blissful state or cultivating special powers or having happy feelings. It is about a simple meditation practice that removes external stimuli so that we are free to experience the most challenging part of reality: ourselves.
Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru.
Zen practice isn’t about a special place or a special peace, or something other than being with our life just as it is. It’s one of the hardest things for people to get: that my very difficulties in this very moment are the perfection. When we are attached to the way we think we should be or the way we think anyone else should be, we can have very little appreciation of life as it is.
Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.
Wisdom is to see that there is nothing to search for. If you live with a difficult person, that’s nirvana. Perfect. If you’re miserable, that’s it. And I’m not saying to be passive, not to take action; then you would be trying to hold nirvana as a fixed state. It’s never fixed, but always changing. There is no implication of ‘doing nothing.’ But deeds done that are born of this understanding are free of anger and judgment. No expectation, just pure and compassionate action.
Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. That seems so simple — except when we substitute for real practice some idea that we should be different or better than we are, or that our lives should be different from the way they are.
We have to face the pain we have been running from. In fact, we need to learn to rest in it and let its searing power transform us.
But sitting is not something we do for a year or two with the idea of mastering it. Sitting is something we do for a lifetime. There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being. Eventually we see that we are the limitless, boundless ground of the universe. Our job for the rest of our life is to open up to that immensity and to express it. Having more and more contact with this reality always brings compassion for others and changes our daily life. We live differently, work differently, relate to people differently. Zen is a lifelong study.
Speaking to a group last week, the question came up, “How long does it take you to make a quilt?”
To which I answered, “I make about a quilt a week.” This led to gasps in the audience, so I thought about it for a second or two and said, “Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not much.”
Later on I figured out a quilt a week times forty years is only 2000 quilts. I’ve made at least that many probably more. There are factors that increase my output, like for the most part I send all hand quilting to the Amish or if I’m making pillows or bags, I make them in multiples.
I wonder how this week’s quilt, which is two sided, should count in the tally?
Embroidery always appealed to me and when I wanted to make this memory piece shown above of my Dad and me, I found the French Knot as my vehicle for interesting texture, scale and color variation.
The knots are formed with two different colors of regular sewing thread wrapped three times around a #8 embroidery needle. Regular sewing thread is great because it is available in hundreds of hues. I use a hue that has five levels of values and by putting two hues together, get great color depth.
I was so happy with the process of making the knots that I went on to do many portraits of my family and to create others by commission.
You can see a little bit more on the technical aspects of how I prepare a French Knot project by looking at Item No. 1 For My Container in this earlier blog.
Way back in the seventies when I started quilting, there were no special fabric manufacturers for quilt fabrics. Alexander Henry a cotton print textile design house saw a new market and began producing beautiful cutting-edge, original prints for quilters. One of their very best was this peacock feather print.
I used the fabric many times during my quilt shop days but mine and also my son’s favorite quilt used the feather fabric along with printed muslin fashioned after this antique diagonal alternate 9-patch:
Fast-forward to last year when I noticed my son was still clinging to this very worn-out and drab thirty-year old quilt. I longed for more of that magnificent fabric to make a replacement. It’s not being made any more but I was fortunate to locate three 4 yard pieces at Pink Chalk Fabrics and scarfed all of them up.
I made two of the pieces along with black raw silk into quilts for each of my granddaughters.
Seeing how great the new quilts turned out and remembering the fabric, my youngest daughter asked if I could make one more for her. I selected this pattern for hers:
While Steve was away for the weekend I pieced the Henry fabric with a beautiful black silk from a Japanese kimono. While the cat’s away, the mice will play! Now off to the Amish for quilting.
Don’t wait for a Gandhi, don’t wait for a King, and don’t wait for a Mandela. You are your own Mandela, you are your own Gandhi and you are your own King. Leymah Gbowee
The personal is political was popularized in the late 60s by Robin Morgan in her classic book Sisterhood is Powerful. Before this women suffered in silence having no idea that the inequality in their personal lives stemmed from larger political issues.
The genius of feminism was to connect these marginalized women into a broad-based, inclusive network of action that alleviated personal suffering and encouraged battles with the male-controlled power base.
The revolution opened the doors to the feminine sources of spirituality, creativity, and intuition connected to heads, hearts, and bodies that finally would give humanity the capacity to balance of all its parts into a new paradigm of co-existing wellness and healing.
And so the movement goes for here we are today with this 2010 US Congressional report: 25 Years Of Progress But Challenges Remain. Here we find white women earned 77.4% of the amount a white man received for the same position. Compared to white men, black women earned only 67.7% of that figure and for Hispanic women, that figure dropped to 58.7%.
It’s not much better in government. The United States is ranked 90th in the number of women in our national legislature. Women hold 17% of the seats in Congress and 22% of all statewide elective executive office positions. State Legislatures are only 24% women and 6 out of 50 states have a female governor. Women constituted 54% of voters in the 2008 elections, but only 24% of state legislators.
While Occupy Wall Street calls attention to the widening economic gaps, it neglects to include a feminist vantage point. In response, women created Occupy Patriarchy to confront the patriarchal system that depends on the exploitation, disempowerment, and subjugation of women both on Wall Street but also occurring regularly at Occupy events.
With so much work still to be accomplished, women are organizing with more consciousness and power. The Feminist Majority Foundation engages in policy development, education, grassroots organizing, and leadership training in issues of women’s equality and empowerment. Their sister organization, the Feminist Majority, engages in lobbying and other direct political action, pursuing equality between women and men through legislative avenues.
The Women in the World Foundation, supported by Newsweek & The Daily Beast, highlights and drives solutions for advancing women and girls through collaboration between organizations and strategic donors.
The Women’s Media Center founded by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem works to directly engage with the media at all levels to ensure that a diverse group of women is present in newsrooms, on air, in print and online, as sources and subjects.
If you’re hungry, keep walking. If you are thirsty, keep walking. If you want a taste of freedom, keep walking. For us, women of Liberia, this award is a call that we will keep walking until peace, justice and the rights of women is not a dream, but is a thing of the present. Leymah Gbowee
Under the administration of Google, who has owned it since 2007, UTube recently received a very smart update. Every user has a customized page create with favorites, channels, history and links to facebook.
The UTube blog explains how the redesign will make it much easier to find and watch the videos of interest and really it’s about time. The old set-up was so random; now we will be able to find and keep track of what we want in an organized efficient system that can keep us engaged with meaning.
Directions: Sew together four half-square 5″ triangles for each finished 6″ block. Make 120 blocks, ten blocks times twelve blocks, for a 60″ X 80″ quilt top.
Fabrics included: Rayon print vest, two JJill hemp pants suits, Heath’s pin-whale corduroy shirt, Dad’s golf hankie, Billy Siegal’s mola remnants, Slave Boy remnants, Sun Dog Shirt, Mom’s 75th creme silk birthday suit, Dad’s navy blazer, Hannah project remnants, MaryAnn’s batik skirt, Lilith Fair Hemp Jumper, three of Mom’s silk shirts, WWI Flag of Jews Praying on Yom Kipper, Sadye and Howie silk applique found by Dana at Triftique, cotton Indian kurta and pants, many different CP Shades shirts and pants, two pair never worn pajama pants, Israel hand-embroidered kaftan, Indian embroidered bag, Sue and Jeff quilt, Batik flower patches from SilkThread, First cashmere sweater, three Panache pants outfits, Blue Chambray pantsuit, Ethnic Indian shirt, Mom’s poke-a-dot silk dress, Heath’s pinstripe nightshirt, handwoven remnant, Dana Buckman vest worn at Eli’s Bar Mitzvah, black linen pants
My almost four-year-old granddaughter is constantly asking questions about jail. In an effort to change her focus from people who are imprisoned for doing bad things, my son, Eli, informed her that her Bubbe had spent time in jail.
That’s right, I, Louise Silk, Bubbe of Maya Elizabeth Silk, made the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1972 when I was arrested and taken to jail along with ninety-eight other members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. We accepted arrest rather than comply with a court injunction banning picketing during a six-week teacher’s strike.
I am the short one with the hippy jeans on the right. We spent one day in prison and they let us out at dinnertime so that they wouldn’t have to feed us.
In contrast, Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, spent 27 prison years with the floor his bed, a bucket for a toilet, doing hard labor in a quarry. His prison experience became the crucible that transformed him into the leader who created a democratic South Africa. This photo was taken during South Africa’s millennium celebration when Nelson Mandela revisited the Robben Island Prison after he had been the President from 1994-1999.
To date there have been over 3000 arrests around the country connected with Occupy Wall Street, the nonviolent protest that began with men and women of all races, backgrounds, political and religious beliefs representing the 99% who want to end the greed and corruption of the wealthiest 1% of America.
The beauty of this new formula, and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people’s assemblies … we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.
BubbeWisdom 