Quilting as a Spiritual Discipline

We are quilters who share an experiential conviction that Joy is the purpose of human existence, and Creativity can be a spiritual practice that leads to it. The objective for the week is to explore that idea in community. We invite participants with varying degrees of quilting experience, though we expect everyone will be sewing either by hand or on machines as the week's activities unfold, so some familiarity working with needles, thread and fabric will help. We hope that folks of all ages, genders, life experience and senses of themselves as as divinely-inspired creators will join us.

The structure of the week's creative activity is simple. Everyone is asked to bring a "starter piece." This can be some quilt block that once excited you for long enough to get it started, but then got laid aside and has been crumpled up in a bag for who knows how long since. Or a small piece you sit down now and take a few hours to start, out of colors you love. Or something you inherited from your grandmother and never knew quite what to do with. In a pinch, you could bring a simple piece of beautiful fabric that takes your breath away. (If you have extra fabric to match the starter piece, tuck some of that in as well).

We will engage in a playful game of "Round Robin." Each participant puts his/her starter piece in a brown bag and we set them all in a pool; everyone picks a bag at random and receives another participant's work. Your assignment (over the next 24 hours) is to sit with it till you get to know it, invite inspiration about what it needs next (whimsy? color? texture? shape? border? applique?), and add something to it that leaves it "bigger and more beautiful." By the end of the week when you reclaim your piece, it should have four new elements. Our experience is that the quick-tempo series of requests to your creative Self will result in genuine fun elaborating on a theme, or adding a border, or putting a strip of colorful pieced nonsense down the side, or adding a matching/ balancing block or whatever. There are no rules other than: surprise and delight the owner.

We plan to assemble and provide several sewing machines, some piles of fabric available for communal use, and a collection of "notions" that might come in handy for whimsy -- buttons, ribbons, etc. We'll have ironing boards and irons (since one can probably quilt better without a sewing machine than without an ironing board!). Bring whatever you can (given your mode of travel) to add to the creative soup. If you can bring your own machine, that would be terrific. Leaders will be in touch after registration closes to find out if participants can add to our inventory of machines -- we'd love one for each two participants. Also consider bringing scissors, favorite fabric or notions of your own, etc. We can also provide mini-demo "lessons" on piecing, applique, or quilting technique depending on participants' interests and needs. [Purists should note that we will not actually "quilt" any of the pieces; we'll be likely doing what quilters call "piecing" or "applique" (or some invented variation) to assemble a small "quilt top" that could then be quilted or framed and hung by the owner at a later date.]

Quilting and handwork undertaken in company tend to generate friendly, relaxed conversational spaces, and we intend to weave throughout our communal space an ongoing exploration of how creativity now does -- or could -- enrich our spiritual lives. Matthew Fox, in his book ORIGINAL BLESSING, suggests that creativity wells up in the mystic in response to his/her holding simultaneously the experience of the Via Positiva (in which we love Life in all its sensual, earthy, overflowing richness) and of the Via Negativa (in which we groan at its breathtaking fragility, and the tragic grief and loss and pain and short-falling that are inevitable shadow parts of Life). When we give ourselves fully to both, we feel an upwelling of the urge to Create. And faithfulness to that leads to Joy ... as well as a sense of ourselves as being truly made in the image of God the Creator. We'll use a mixture of formal Worship Sharing (40-60 minutes daily) and informal queries over needlework to explore which parts of this idea ring true experientially for us.