Dearest Hive Needleworkers and Friends,

This week was rollercoasterish and quite perturbing in places – but throughout I’ve been sewing passionately, and this Monday morning sees TWO garments - almost almost almost perfectly complete!

My new red coat went through a DRASTIC transformation, as the length of it was not right at all: it seemed like a Chinese historical piece! Plus it would not have sat nicely, even on a tall person. I cut a good 20 cm out of it, having thought for quite a few hours, about how I could take some length out, without disturbing the zip, or the contours….

The big cutting reminds me that length is not everything; sometimes I add maximum length to a garment, just because I have enough fabric to, but not able to quite sense how it will balance overall (or not!)

The second garment is a variation of one that I drew this week (and shared on Ecency Waves): a multi-tweed dress, using the bodice from one dress, and cutting up the skirt to make centre and back panels – then adding two large sections either side, almost like a bustle, from other trousers.

The new dress was completed by adding a third fabric (three strips from legs of a second pair of jeans) as a short ruffle along the bottom. I really like how this makes it a more unusual style – it is the kind of dress I will wear for sure, though I don’t have many occasions that would ask for such a smart-casual-funky-sturdy model!

These two garments mark a speeding-up of my practise, which is exciting, as I have felt really ‘incapable’ in my new career and craft: getting up to Flow is not easy, when one is not yet familiar with the materials and forms!

It is like having a new garden in a new country and climate; there is nothing to do but observe, make a bit of a mess, and know that the mastery will come – very very very slowly but surely…. Until it comes, we simply have to make chaos - and learn from it.

There is no easy way, unless we take stepping stones across this difficult abyss, by following a teacher, a technique, a series of lessons.

The method of following rather than learning naturally is always tempting. But it does not allow the fullness of our unique learning-growing-becoming to unfold.

Not that everyone who enters a new craft has to “reinvent the wheel”, but I Know our collective wisdom to be something subtle and embodied – rather than something which can be ‘bought’, or short-cut-ed into!

The riches that come down to us through our very hands-heart-imagination are immense, IF we allow them through. They come to us through practise and through humility; through letting go much more than by grasping at physical things. Through presence in the everymoment, fully listening and moving from what we hear.

If we allow our whole Being to tune in and move smoothly, seeking harmony, order, fine tune and sculpt whatever we work on to perfection…. Things come to us much more than the calming of the nervous system.

As we know from the history of crafts, Real Art and sacred objects, the full immersion in a practise can harness energy and wisdom, insight and meaning, freedom and magic. Recognising the power and responsibility in this is vital.

All things have power, some things more than others, and we have to be able to discern as to what kind of power we are channeling into the world. Is my ego seeking a reward that I do not merit? Am I expecting applause and adoration?

Or am I presenting what I co-create, in order to bring more beauty-depth-meaning to our shared reality?

I endeavour towards the latter. Even if my influence appears to be minimal and local, I know that there is in fact a massive reverberating effect to one consciously taking old garments – symbolic as representing superficial values – from the market….. a boring dress or pair of jeans that at best will cover a person’s legs and look assimilatingly acceptable, as they sit in a bar talking mince every now and again.

Making Clothing Magical Again (my McMA label), refers to bringing spirit back into our clothes. Bringing meaning and intention back into our getting dressed every day: clothing as sacred armour to the crazy that prevails in our global frivolities: handstitched, intentional clothing to protect us and identify us as living women and living men, rather than robotic automatons who are following only what currencies and governing bodies and conventional media dictate to us.

Creating our own unique garments is a hugely radical (rooted) practise, as it takes us OUT of the grind and the conveyor belt of the mainstream consumer way, and into The Mystery. Making our own clothing, imbued with our unique hands, our mind, our love, and through Trust and Flow, working with an activate Vital Force which is actually listening to the cosmos: our hands may channel all manner of great things.