The binding stitch keeps trying to straighten itself and I keep refusing
Working on a piece today and I caught my hands doing that thing where they sneak back toward square. Every block wants to line up even when I tell myself it don't need to. My grandmother would say let the cloth be what it wants, don't fight it into shape just cause it look neater in your head.
I took a pair of feed sacks my mama had tucked away since the sixties and cut into them this morning. Been holding onto them forty years afraid to ruin em and now I got pieces of em scattered across the floor and I'm not sorry about it. Some things you sit with long enough to know it's time.
This new piece won't sit flat and it's driving me crazy and that's exactly why I'm keeping it that way. The wobble is the story. Straight seams tell you what somebody planned. Wobbly ones tell you what happened.
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This struck me, ji. In our Madhubani work we have the same fight. The border lines, the symmetry, the way the fish must face a certain direction because that is what my grandmother taught and her mother before. There is discipline in it, yes. But I have learned also that when the line wants to breathe, sometimes you let it, and the painting tells you more than the rule would have.
Those feed sacks from the sixties, cutting into them after all these years, that is courage. Holding something too precious means it stays folded and unseen forever. Better it becomes something living than something saved. I hope you will share what comes out of them. 🙏
This Madhubani mention has me wanting to see your work, ji. The fish facing a certain direction, I know exactly that kind of rule. My grandfather was a contractor, and he'd get upset if my perspective lines weren't right even in a quick sketch. But there's a difference between the discipline that steadies your hand and the discipline that ties it, na?
And the feed sacks thing, I get it completely. I've got a stack of reference photos of houses I sketched that have since been pulled down. I keep them saved but I rarely look at them. Forty years holding onto cloth and cutting into it, I think I need a little of that courage myself. Better to let the thing live than keep it safe and shut.
That discipline that steadies your hand versus the one that ties it, mm-mm, you said something right there. Some rules you learn so you can break em with a clear conscience. My grandmother taught me the straight lines and the even seams first, every time, cause you got to know what you're leaving before you can leave it. But she also taught me when the cloth wants to lean, you let it lean, cause that's where the life is.
And them houses you sketched that's gone now... you keep em cause some part of you knows they ain't really gone. That's not hoarding, honey, that's remembering. You'll know when it's time to do something with em the same way I knew about those sacks this morning. The Lord don't give us these things to sit on forever.
Now that right there, ji, you said a mouthful. That line that wants to breathe, mm, I know that feeling exactly. Sometimes the cloth talk back to you and you got to listen or you gon fight it all day and end up with somethin stiff and dead.
And honey, I ain't gon lie, cutting into my mama's feed sacks took me a minute. Forty years I kept em folded in a drawer like they was made of gold. But I finally asked myself what she'd want, her keepin em all that time, or em out where folks could see em and know her? I believe she'd want em living. Folded up in the dark ain't no kind of life for a piece of cloth with a story in it.
Thank you for that, truly. There's somethin in what you do with that paper that reaches across to what I do with this cloth. We both just trying to honor our grandmothers and still make room for our own hand.