Close up

~ Liz A

I chose to remain nearsighted when I signed up for cataract surgery. Having been that way since I was eight years old, I couldn’t imagine giving it up.

So the past week of close stitching has been a poignant meditation on the lives of Ruth Bader Ginsburg …

and Michelle Slater …

It’s not quite right to call such work joy-full, even as much as I marveled at my ability to see clearly again, so I’ll leave it at heart-felt. Likewise, I don’t think they are necessarily “done” nor do I know what final form they might take.

It was enough to want to create them and be able to.

22 thoughts on “Close up”

  1. Beautiful. Will you tell me more about the words for Michelle? Her words or…?
    Both patches are heartfelt indeed and I would add the word bittersweet. It is amazing how much one can be missed. Be well.

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      1. Yes. It sounded familiar. It’s funny how the words read so differently to me, as just this small bit, in stitch instead of type? I agree, looking back makes things so obvious.

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        1. I’m guessing that it was the last line of the Wendell Berry quote that “stuck” in most people’s minds (“for a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free”), but it was the penultimate line with its “day-blind stars” that I most loved

          when I stitch words, I speak them in my mind, over and over … they stay with me after that

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  4. As much as the colors on both of these cloth tributes sing our in richness; vibrant as was RBG; soothing in the blues and yet warm in the corals, so like Michelle and as much as the stitched words, RBG’s and the phrase chosen for Michelle (I don’t know if this is a direct quote from her?) it is your unique way of stitching letters Liz, that lends such a depth of caring and awareness…

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    1. I have to give credit to a one-time school colleague who told me bulletin board letters were much easier to hang if they weren’t lined up along the bottom … that and Jude’s encouragement to just go with it led to the intentionally wonky lettering that I now use for both stitching and hand writing … and the words are Wendell Berry’s, as quoted in Michelle’s last blog post

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  8. Heart-felt and love-full. Beautiful honourings and so wonderful that you can rekindle your love of stitching with new eyes…some good and welcome news.

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    1. B – truly, I have no clue what to “do” with these bits of cloth, but they called out to be made … if honouring is their purpose, it is enough

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