Everything starts somewhere in time and place. And sometimes it’s hard to say just when and where.

So we get to decide: I’ll start the story here.

That’s what I’m doing with this post and what I’m calling my “ReDress project,” although it’s fuller title in my mind is “Redress-reDress.” It’s a multi-sided, multi-media’ed exploration of the process of redressing a wrong, an old wound, while also sewing myself new clothes. (Get it? Redress a wrong; re-dress a wound; reDress myself…)

What can I say to get this launched? I love making things (knitting, painting, writing, sewing), and I love playing with words, looking up words in dictionaries, finding intriguing connections and double-meanings and overlapping sounds, rhythms, rhymes.

This past winter I found myself drawn to some Instagram posts featuring fabric and sewing, some of it the machine sewing of garments and “improvisational quilts,” some hand-stitching of small pieces of fabric in what fiber artist Liz Kettle calls “Stitch Meditations.” I decided during the season of Lent, I would try doing one “stitch meditation” each day, more or less. I posted them on Instagram and fully intended to, but never quite did, post them here. Better late than never.

The process of putting together small bits of fabric and hand-sewing them with colored threads makes a good visual beginning of my ReDress project, even if it started before that in my thinking. So I’m starting with Lenten stitch meditation number one, sewn on February 14, 2018, which was both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday.

More to come.