Linda McNutt...Healing with Cloth

 

I'd like to introduce Linda McNutt ....creator of small, inspiring works of art made from bits of cloth and hours of hand stitching.

The beginnings...Linda's first healing cloth in process.

I first met Linda when she journeyed to Virginia (with her friend Ruth T.) from New York to take my

Patching, Stitching, Weaving: Creating Healing Cloth workshop in March 2015. Above is the first "healing cloth" (in process) that Linda started in the workshop. 

Linda and Ruth recently returned to Virginia for my Jumpstart in Hand Stitching workshop. At the end of the first day, Linda pulled out a selection of healing cloths. Seems that she caught the "stitching bug"! The entire class was astounded by these amazing jewels!

I was fortunate to be able to purchase this particular piece from Linda. It really spoke to me.

This final piece has a beautiful story. We didn't actually get to see it in person, but Linda told us about it and later sent me this photo with the story behind it.

Linda created this piece for her friend Julie W., who is a psychotherapist as well as a healer. Her friend works with energy healing and channeling, prayer, astrology, and crystals. Linda's friend wanted a piece that would cover a person's chest for when she does her crystal healing work. When working with someone, she could lay it on their chest, or on another affected area of their body, then sometimes place crystals, or a laying on of hands.

The antique quilt centerpiece has a very special story. The original quilt was given to Linda by a mutual friend of both hers and Julie's. This friend was also  a therapist and Buddhist teacher and unfortunately lost her life to cancer. She was Julie's best friend and even though Julie didn't request it, Linda felt it seemed right to include something that evoked the love and energy of their friend from a quilt that lay at the end of her bed.

In Linda's words:
Parts of the quilt block that were frayed and torn were mended or embroidered over to make them whole. I found this a very powerful part of the  Meditation and Healing Cloth (Patching, Stitching, Weaving: Creating Healing Cloth) workshop, by the way: the idea of mending, binding, patching, reweaving, with stitch and color. Perhaps not always able to keep the old, but transforming into something new.

The circle is a symbol of unity and oneness, the wheel a reference to the wheel of life. As a "coincidence", the back of the stitching looks like an astrological chart.

The leaves are about new growth, new flowering, spirals of energy radiate from the center. Other symbols came from an intuitive flow through meditation, and I tried to intentionally leave openings and opportunities for the healer and the individual to find their own meanings and purposes.

 ...I must say this stitching process is as much a healing for me...

Thank you Linda for sharing your beautiful, rich work with us!

I will be teaching the next Patching, Stitching, Weaving: Creating Healing Cloth workshop on June 17 and 18. Click on the highlighted words for more information.

Healing Cloth

My Patching, Stitching, Weaving: Creating Healing Cloth workshop is coming up in a couple of weeks.

In prepping for this workshop, I got inspired by two books. One is by a local quilt artist and the other is a catalog for a show that I wish I could have viewed first-hand. Both are testaments to the healing power and personal meaning that can be found in cloth.

Healing Journey: Quilts About Transformation in the Presence of Cancer by Lauren Kingsland

The quilts presented in this self-published book were first exhibited as a group at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital, Washington D.C. The works were inspired by Kingsland's experiences of cancer that she witnessed during her work as a professional visiting artist at the hospital. Each week she offered hands-on quiltmaking and fiber art projects to patients, families/caregivers and hospital staff as "a creative outlet for stress management and community connection". Hundreds of people shared their stories with her "over pieces of bright colored cloth and a needle". (p. 1)

Aloft: 19" x 17"

"A quilt can be a metaphor for putting together the pieces of a situation in an harmonious way. As an artistic medium, a quilt can be a tool for gaining a new perspective on the familiar. Each fabric alone can suggest an idea or evoke a feeling. Put them together in a quilt and often the result is a whole greater than the sum of its parts...." (pg 1)

Beside Still Waters: 29" x 26"

Tender Places: 29" x 26"

Threads of Feeling: The London Foundling Hospitals Textile Tokens, 1740-1770 by John Styles

Styles first started researching the textiles from the Foundling Hospital as a means of learning more about the clothing of ordinary people during the eighteenth century. Surviving garments of working class people were hard to come by and he decided to search instead for surviving textiles. Historians of children's clothing pointed him to the Foundling Textiles with its archive of  "some 5,000 rare, beautiful, mundane and moving scraps of fabric...Britain's largest collection of everyday textiles. They had so much to tell us, not just about the history of fabric and clothing, but also about the lives of women and their babies.." (p. 6)

The hospital was established in 1741 "for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children." (p. 11) (T)he mother retained the right to reclaim the child if her circumstances changed. In practice, such cases were few. Only 152 children were reclaimed out of the 16,282 admitted between 1741 and 1760...two-thirds admitted during these years died.

"The number of children actually reclaimed by their mothers may have been tiny, but ensuring that mothers were able to take their children back was an important priority for the Hospital." (p. 14).

"...the Hospital encouraged mothers to supply a token, which might be a note, a letter, or a small object, to be kept with the billet as an identifier... (p. 15) Great care was taken to take and retain information collected on registration forms (billets) and to preserve the tokens. "An overwhelming majority of the objects attached to the billets are swatches of textiles." (p. 17)

"The Foundling textiles also include many examples of what is clearly non-professional embroidery, often executed in woollen or worsted yarn. What this crude embroidery lacks in skill is sometimes offset by its raw emotional power." (p. 57)

"The hopes of the mothers invested in their babies were also expressed in fabric....such hopes were expressed far more vividly by means of carefully selected textile images, often obtained by customizing the natural imagery commonly employed in designs printed on linens and cottons. An acorn or bud might suggest germination and new growth, a bird or butterfly the chance to fly free, a flower the capacity to blossom and fruit."

...but the most direct expressions of raw maternal emotion found among the Foundling tokens are those that used the heart, the established symbol of love in the eighteenth century...It is fitting that the only token illustrated in this book for a child reclaimed by its mother is a piece of patchwork with a heart sewn on it in red thread. It was subsequently cut in half. One half was presented with the child to the Hospital. The other was, presumably, kept by the mother until the reunion, when the heart was made whole." (pp. 64-70)

Story Cloth Get Together at Artistic Artifacts

Today, I met with Barbara, Susan and Jane for a Story Cloth get together. It's been a few months since our last session of Fabric Painting, Printing, and Stitching to Tell a Story with Cloth. We all wanted to see the finished story cloths and spend some time together. And...since we were meeting at Artistic Artifacts...do a bit of shopping afterwards.

Barbara was the first to show us her final wall piece inspired by the movie, Midnight's Children, an adaptation of Salman Rushdie's novel.

For an explanation of her process and how stitching freely had her connecting to her own childhood see her blog,  Papillon Creative (posts on Telling a Story on Cloth Parts 1-3).

Barbara also brought along some of her stitching experiments and explorations. She is enjoying stitching freely with no final intention. She talked about how her stitched lines are like journeys.

Susan brought in her pieces with the mysterious figures. She talked about relationships and communication. How the word "circle" is a constant in our vocabulary...inner circles, circle of friends... This became a theme in this piece.

The tea bag paper piece is also moving toward completion. The group was impressed by the subtle stitching in white thread surrounding the figures.

A new piece is in the works. We can't wait to see where this one is heading.

Susan also brought in her finished piece from, Patching, Stitching, Weaving: Creating Healing Cloth.

I was particularly interested in seeing Jane's piece. By the last class, she'd printed the moles and gotten the design laid out but there was still stitching to do.

What a delightful piece! Jane decided to stuff the moles to make them pop more from the background and her dense stitching and little details were just wonderful. We all loved the barking dog!

To see some of these pieces in process see: Story Cloth: An Update and Rich Stories.

After our meeting we spent an hour looking at all the amazing supplies at Artistic Artifacts. If you live in the Washington, DC area and you've never been to this shop...it's a must see! If you don't live nearby, you can order many supplies online.

All three of us picked out hand-dyed fabric packets that included vintage lace and crocheted doilies. We decided for our next get together, we'd work on a story (or a stitched piece) that incorporated some of the fabrics we purchased. I also got some other colorful goodies!

Judy Gula, the owner of Artistic Artifacts, invited me to do some demos at the store's open house on December 6th. She's hoping that she might have some copies of my book, Fabric Printing at Home, by then. In any case, I'll be back there at the very end of January for an official book signing, demos and a two-day workshop. Stay tuned.

If you have an interest in the Story Cloth class, I'll be teaching it as a 7-session Wednesday evening class at The Art League School, starting on September 17. Click here for more info.