Dearest Needleworking Masters!

I'm writing on Sunday morning from my kitchen table, with a cool breeze clearing the house air, birds twittering merrily outside, and immensely looking forward to welcoming some Hive friends to Guardia Sanframondi later today!

I've got the last - I hope! - phase of my Jesu dress on the table with me, next to my Twinings Breakfast Tea: two long strips of white silk cut from the edge of a big square scarf: I'm relatively-clumsily rolling the cut edges of it, before I fold it in half and make the THIRD attempt at solving the waist... The other two attempts were a medium-thickness elastic (I'd sewn the seam too close joining the top to the skirt, making the cavity too tight for the strip of elastic), and a long red silk cord (made from strips of a not-very-attractive chamisole). Both were way too clunky.

Often I am aware when working on a big project like this - where I'm very excited to make the garment, to complete it - that things can kind of bottleneck or get tangled near the end. My over-excitement makes me rush into the work and the decisions around solutions. Like every job is a microcosm of the macrocosm: listening more closely can help me feel into where I need to slow down, focus, grow up.

I love this learning process, of recognising how every stitch is an expression: it is like a small reading of what is happening in my mindbodyspirit - and it guides me to realign, bring my attention in. Even the poise of my body can reflect where I need to rest more, calm my mind, or get more motivated.

In all honesty, I do often find it difficult to fully motivate; sometimes a heavy weight of I-don't-know-what feels present, and makes it hard work to move my imagination. I try to meet this weight where it is, and allow it to express before doing anything about it - but often it just sits too long, and I have to accept its company.

But creativity unlocks anything weighing on my shoulders: each wee tiny stitch acts as living metaphor of bringing everything together: sewing the world into a better shape? Like the alchemy of brushstrokes, song lyrics, bare feet on the bare earth, breathing in sea or mountain air - incremental transformation through the act of each and every minute act and activity bringing us either closer to the sacred geometry of all things, or away from it.

Being conscious that all things reflect all things, I concentrate and make my stitches more even, and when the thread gets tangled I stop and breathe more deeply, stretch my spine, get up and shake off any stagnancy. As the garment comes closer to refinement, I feel more in harmony with everything.

This dress is a special one, as every garment is for me, but this is another of the pushing-through-neuroses pieces that is profoundly enriching to my confidence and sureness of being on the right path. I had the feeling for it right back when I bought the 'Heileges Herz Jesu!' table cloth at the 1 Euro stall a few months ago. The combination of religious kitch, the strong script, the powerful red on white symbolism and the delicious fabric of thin white cotton; together these qualities made me instantly imagine a dress coming from it.

But I held back, thinking it'd be too eccentric and might trigger folks here - even if they don't speak German: just the symbol of the sacred heart might be a tad over-the-top for Guardia/ south Italy. After doing my last project of the stripey dress, and getting such consistently positive feedback about it, I decided to jump in though!

It has been relatively straightforward in terms of construction to make it: just needed a very particular weight of cloth for the back part, which I made from an old petticoat which I opened up and attached to the front 'apron' of the Jesu cloth. I ruched both parts and added pockets from scraps left over from my cross-stitch dress from a few weeks ago. I love these wee scraps and was waiting to add them as pockets somewhere special.

I did quite a bit of selecting in finding the right top-half of this dress; again, it needed the correct weight and shade of cotton, and I ended up cutting sleeves off of a blouse and turning it upside down, to make the waist. The two sections sat very well together, with a temporary elastic on top of the ruched skirt - but I really wanted a dress rather than separates. So I took out both of the elastics - and then ensued a great tangle of thinking and over-thinking which made me run through the 3 different options for the new waist: not thinking them through first, but practically actually making them and trying them, at great expense of time-energy-attention-effort!

At the end of the project, I recognise that this is a good learning process; I shouldn't get hung up on 'time wasted' or criticise myself around not working 'efficiently' or 'masterfully' enough! I can simply allow what needs to be learned, to unfold in its perfect timing, according to the Natural Law of unfoldment. :-)

This is a beautiful practise.

So on I go with the final - I think and hope! - stages of the belt-like silk cord, which I anticipate will run nicely where the elastic of the top previously was: think I have the other seam nicely aligned and filled - and this will compliment how I've added a less-tight elastic to the front of the dress waist and a tighter one to the back of it- the cord will add a kind of complimentary tension of a rope that closes alongside the elasticated part. Fingers crossed!

Jobs like this really help me keep moving forward in this sewing mastery journey. What about you? What is helping you forward in your confidence and vision of life?

My love to you all and I so look forward to seeing what we all create this week!

Clare.

www.claregaiasophia.com

PS I am creating this post by an amazing feat of technological juggling between appliances, in a coffee bar in Telese Terme: I hope you can make sense of the order of the images, and I will correct the layout when I get on laptop internet back in Guardia!