Weaving and the Moon

“We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.”
Henry Ward Beecher (Liberal US Congregational minister, 1813-1887).

Sometimes I have a spell of sleeping really badly and I have noticed of late that this occurs around the full moon but I suspect also at the New Moon too. I have a gadget on my Google Homepage now which shows the phase of the moon each day and I am trying to check this out without assuming that I will be hit with insomnia at certain moon phases. I have decided that this year I will make a patch of fabric every month which relates to the moon in some way.

I am also fascinated by the lie of fabric, especially in sunlight, after it has been woven, and so have experimented. My first patch was in denim and was made from some old jeans (I am recycling this year) but when I came to embroider it yesterday I couldn't get the needle through without a lot of pain and foul language and so today I used linen and turban cotton on a base of quilters muslin - I like the lightness of this and am looking forward to some Kantha style stitching on it.

I am combining the moon theme with the weaving and am going to bleach the moon in St. Lucia last week on to this patch and then stitch it. Interestingly the moon was lying on it's back over there - presumably because we were close to the equator. Here in Britain the moon crescent is more upright.

Each month in 2009 I am going to make a patch which relates to my life and some aspect of the moon and then put it together into a slow growing cloth.