The Birth Collection

The Birth Collection was begun in 2018, and the final piece finally came off of the loom in 2021.

The Birth Story series of mini tapestries debuted this month (January 2023) at my First Friday show and will be in the Imbolc shop update, so I thought that now is the perfect time to share about this collection

Birth is a threshold. Giving birth, the body becomes a portal, inviting life from one side of the veil into the other. Baby moves from darkness of womb like a seed in soil into the light of this world. We become the doorway for spirit. There is a special energy that emerges when we stand between two worlds. It is an energy that we share with sprouting plants, with hatching eggs, with algae blooms and flower buds, with animal mamas everywhere. 

We can prepare. We can dream. We can plan. And yet when the birth field opens around us, we can only surrender to the process. Sometimes it exactly as we imagined, and sometimes it is very very different. Whether a surgical birth or a vaginal one, a natural birth or a medically assisted one; we cannot control the energy of birth. We can harness ourselves to it, we can be the vessel for it, we can fight it, we can ride it, but we cannot control it. The body opens and baby crosses the threshold. It is a sacred thing this opening, a thing of blood and bone and flesh and pain and breath and sometimes excrement too, that brings a sweet new unfolding into the world.

I did much of the prep work for this warp -including spinning the supplemental yarn for Unfolding - in my last trimester of pregnancy, at the same time as I was doing my own personal spiritual preparations for birth, calling in my guides and allies and working with my ancestral spirits to provide a safe and protected birth space for my daughter and an easy labor for myself.  The talisman shown in some of the photos below features the goddess Frigg and was a focal point for much of my personal work. 

The warp is of longstaple cotton/hemp from Saltwater Rose Threads and is dyed in soft earth tones and florals.

Birth: Unfolding

This piece is named Unfolding and is a meditation on the journey of labor.  There are 10 supplementary warp threads of the handspun rose viscose.  One tail (and its fringe) starts with three supplements and the other seven are added in staggered along the length of the wrap so that the opposite tail (and its fringe) have 10 supplements.  This is meant to represent dilation.  3 cm dilation is (very broadly speaking) a benchmark for when you may admitted to hospital or when a midwife will tell you to head to the birth center.  It (again very broadly speaking) marks the entrance into the active phase of labor.  10 cm, of course, is full dilation.  


The weft is rose viscose from Saltwater Rose Threads and I dyed it in shades of soft pinks and taupes.  The dilation symbology is also embedded in the weft.  I dyed ten concentric circles into the blank canvas of the weft, along with three runes:  laguz for the waves of labor, flowing birth, and amniotic fluid; berkana for birth and new life and the goddess tree, and jera for fruitful harvest and the childbearing year.  I use the symbology of runes in my fiber practice as a way of (re)connecting to the spiritual paths of my ancestors. 

The handspun supplementary yarn is made of rose viscose which I dyed in the same floral tones as appear in the warp.  I spun it and then chain plied it which allows for a color grad along its length (in this instance it is multiple smaller color grads throughout the skein).  This means that the supplementary warp threads change color along the length of the warp and the weft inlays do likewise, fading through colors in a single inlay.


There are handspun weft inlays throughout the piece.  For the most part, they are worked in themes of three and ten.  Three for the three phases of labor, the three aspects of the goddess, the three visible phases of the moon, the triad of baby-mother-grandmother (for the baby is present in the uterus of the fetal mother in the womb of the grandmother).  Ten again for the 10 cm dilation and for the way that ten signifies completion and change in our decimal number system.  

Others are meandering inlays that trace different paths with single or multiple inlays going at once that felt very much like storytelling as I did them.

Near one tail, there is a twined inlay of the Berkana rune (the same as is dyed into the weft.) Berkana is an ancient word for the birch tree, and the runes symbolically represents growth and rebirth. It is a rune of new beginnings. It indicates good news, birth, fertility and times of family rejoicing. 

Birth: Surrender

Birth Surrender was woven as a semi custom, so its design was in collaboration with the customer to whom the wrap went home. These collaborations are deeply personal to the person for whom I am working and involves intimate and often private visual symbology.

This piece features a hand dyed weft of silk/nettle and a double heart inlay on one tail that I spun from hand dyed superwash targhee.

Birth Healing

Birth Healing was woven as a semi custom, so its design was in collaboration with the customer to whom the wrap went home. These collaborations are deeply personal to the person for whom I am working and involves intimate and often private visual symbology.

This piece was an incredible honor to work on. It involves inlays and weft yarn changes with color blocking patterned intuitively and based on numerical symbology. It includes inlays of mohair locks and a variety of handspun and commercial yarns, hemstitching and faux lace inlays, and a large ogham inlay. I’m utterly in love with this piece and deeply grateful for the chance to create it.

Birth Story

This mixed media wall art piece has a blog post all of its own: check it out!

Birth Stories Series

The Birth Stories mini tapestry series that debuted at Just the Tips during my January 2022 First Friday exhibition grew directly out of this collection. This is an ongoing series that you are sure to hear more about in future! Stay tuned.

Handspun 2021

Spinning is the fiber craft that is honestly the most process oriented, meditative craft for me. I can talk some good talk about weaving and sewing and knitting being a meditative process, and it can be! I often get lost in the rhythm or the focus of the handwork, but for me they are very much product-oriented all the same. I knit because I want a sweater, I weave because I want a towel or have a vision of cloth, I sew to make a thing or fix a thing. But spinning! Spinning is a joy and a solace. Its about the whims of texture and color. Its about the rhythm of hands (and sometimes feet). Adding twist untangles my brain. My breath slows. I fall into the process.

2021 was the year of reading words instead of making yarn. It was lovely, and an indulgence I’d mostly given up on in the oh-so-young childhood years. Which is to say that very little was spun, my spindles got dusty, my wheel neglected. (Can you tell I’ve been picking them up again, since I’m waxing poetic about it?) But I did get a bit of this and a bit of that spun up: here’s 2021 in twist.

Twinkle Lights and Christmas Market are two colorways from Inglenook Fibers, on two of my favorite bases: targhee/bamboo/silk and merino/tussah/flax respectively. These were a pure indulgence and spun on a whim in the aftermath of the holidays and to bring in the new year for 2021. They’re both destined to find homes on the loom, and I cannot wait to see them woven up.

These spindles are full of Jacob wool from a bit of a fleece that was part of the Guild’s program about the Shave ‘em to Save ‘em program. I’m collecting a whole pile of spun yarn from various undyed fibers and am only beginning to dream up what they might become.

Turning Leaf Lichen is another Inglenook Fibers- a combination of two different batts, each spun as one of the two plies. I really enjoy spinning from batts, the textural variety between different wools, silks, and viscose fibers is a delight. This recently migrated into my “possibly a sweater” pile from my “probably to be woven” pile. But we’ll see.

This skein of superwash wool was an impulse purchase at the Fairbanks Fiber Fest a few years ago. It was spun and knitted up into a shawl for Miss 3 this year. I think it was for her birthday?

This bit of Corriedale is the Witches Brew colorway curated by @1764Shepardess for #spin15aday. Some year eventually I’ll do a Halloween themed warp, and in the meantime some of this might find its way into a doll shawl or three.

These skeins! These are 2 ply lace weight skeins in The Woodland Pixie’s Red Fox colorway and I am as proud of them as I am of anything else I have ever spun. They’re destined for the Baby Fox warp. Once upon a time when I began spinning them, I was wearing my little foxy girl on my back nearly every day and these skeins were going to become a baby wrap. But we’ve since outgrown our wearing days, so they’ll be a for a couple of the specialest shawls ever. As you may have guessed, I began spinning these YEARS ago. And they hovered over me as an unfinished spin that I owed my attention to for the entire time, even as I set aside the bobbins and spun on something else. Part of it was the determination to spin fine a enough for a true two ply laceweight (I’ve just got a new whorl with higher ratios that should make such a thing easier or at least faster in the future), and part of it was that I was spinning for a product rather than for pure delight. The became a slog. The actual spinning was enjoyable, but my relationship with the project ceased to be, somewhere along the way. This is the spin that taught me that its not worth it to place expectations of productivity on my weaving. We - the yarn and I - are both better served if I flit from spin to spin on the whims of joy and indulgence.

I’m not sure what that means for the two sweater spins and the beginnings of a blanket spin sitting waiting on my shelves, nor for my firm preference to knit and wear sweaters of handspun, but I suppose it will all work itself out so long as I give myself permission to enjoy every bit of the process and release the expectations that make a meditative and indulgent practice into a job.