The Quilting Path
A Guide to Spiritual Discover through Fabric, Thread and Kabbalah
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
Quilting is the miracle of giving new life and purpose to
fabric scraps. It can rejuvenate your spiritual life too.
We affirm that life is here and now in our quilting and its ability to enable our journey. It is the vehicle for our continuing movement along our lifetime of efforts. Our quilts allow both the goal and the process in one magnificent creation after another. Our quilting generates the perfect combination of faith with action, hope with realism, and the universal with the particular, so that we are blissful and grateful in our co-creation experiences.
—from the Conclusion
What can you learn about yourself through quilt making? What deeper symbolism can you find in the act of cutting and piecing? How can this simple activity help you make your way down a spiritual path?
Delve into these questions and more in this imaginative book that will become your spiritual friend, your teacher and your sanctuary. Contemporary quilter Louise Silk takes you through her own quilting journey to discover how the process of making a quilt can be used to explore and strengthen your own spirituality. Each chapter introduces a universal human attribute organized according to the mystical tradition of Kabbalah, relates it to a personal life practice and then applies the attribute and the practice to an original quilt project.
Anyone from the novice to the needlework expert—and from any faith tradition—will be nourished and gratified by the patchwork and appliqu experiences offered in this creative, engaging book. These ten projects, carefully designed for you, include: One-Patch Utility Quilt Log Cabin Quilt String Pieced Pillows Straight Furrows Baby Blanket Quilting Carry-all Bag Patchwork Prayer Shawl Folk Art Appliqu Quilt Remembrance Crazy Quilt T-shirt Quilt Rail Fence Signature Tablecloth Plus dozens of variations …
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the popular trend of connecting spirituality and art, professional quilter and quilting instructor Silk seeks to connect her craft with the mystical Jewish tradition of Kabbalah. While a likely connection exists between creativity, mysticism, and quilting, the book is largely unsuccessful at illuminating it. Each chapter presents one of ten divine attributes posited by Kabbalah, along with a spiritual practice and instructions for a quilt, but there is too little of each of these to be helpful, and the segues between paragraphs and between sections are weak. One chapter, for instance, jumps from a detailed description of how different each of her children is, to a discussion of chesed (unconditional love), to angels, to the Buddhist practice of lovingkindness, and finally to directions for making a baby quilt. The thread-pardon the pun-that connects all of these elements is often unclear. Quilting instructions are minimal, usually two pages per quilt, and the illustrations aren't labeled, making this a book only for experienced quilters. While Silk is clearly knowledgeable about Kabbalah, spirituality, and quilting, she combines too many elements here, creating a mulligan stew that will probably not satisfy either spirituality readers or quilters.