Picture the hushed voice of a nature film narrator, the camera hidden behind a bush, the crew holding its breath. And there, in the clearing, a bear is laying out quilt blocks on a table. Arcs of Silk Thread is our collection of painterly wild animals caught mid project, each one wrapped in fine, glinting arcs of thread that loop through the air around them like the path of a needle. Settle in. Tonight's footage is extraordinary.
The sprinters
We begin on the open plains, where a cheetah races by with long streamers of pieced fabric flying out behind her. She simply has strips to sew and no patience for a slow machine. Nearby, a cougar poses in profile, her whole body pieced in coral and teal patchwork, silk thread arcing around her like a lasso. Out at sea, an orca has pulled right up to a sewing table with a quilt of bold blocks on the go, the most confident thing our crew has ever seen a whale do.
The careful stitchers
In the forest, the pace slows. A brown bear stands at his table checking every block twice before a single seam goes through. A stag works a patchwork quilt stretched across a wooden frame, and in the snowy north a reindeer sits with a folded quilt in his lap, tying the layers with slow, patient knots. High on a mountain, a wolf pieces a great star block among the peaks, and a mountain goat perches on a cliff that turns out to be made of patchwork, tying off a quilt at a dizzying height. A graceful gazelle in a flowing wrap kneels beside a tidy stack of quilts, needle in hand, as calm as a Sunday afternoon.
The big personalities
Some animals quilt on a grand scale. An elephant spreads a quilt across a table that looks very small beneath her, and she is not worried about it for a second. A moose sits at his machine surrounded by finished quilts, a giraffe bends her long neck over her sewing machine as fabric strips trail to the floor, and a lion sews at his machine beneath a pale desert sun. Down at the water, an octopus hangs quilts on a line in her coral reef and, in another scene, sits at her machine inside a wreath of leaves and bubbles, every arm on a different block. A pelican glides past with fabric bolts in his beak, a sea lion stitches among swirling currents, and as the sun sets, a lioness stretches out under an acacia tree with a quilt across her lap.
Now, back to the studio
Every one of these creatures has a match in your own life. There is the sprinter who finishes a top in a weekend, the careful friend who measures twice, and the one who happily works on a project bigger than her table. Pick her animal, the one that is SO her, and pass it along. Our narrator would like to add, in a whisper, that the elephant finished first.
Written by Jenny. Thanks for reading.
