Catching the Soul of her Baby to Be

Early in 2011 several of my friends had daughters expecting babies. Somehow the wonder of pregnancy got into my hands while I was fooling around with a sheer bright salmon colored strip of cloth and it reminded me of the torso of a woman. Looking around for a background I found the back of some sparkly sequin material and stretched it on the rug backing. But it wasn’t long enough.

Knowing that it’s hard to piece together background fabric and hide the seam, I rolled the bottom up and attached the roll higher in the middle than at the ends and waited to see what would suggest itself.

The mother came quickly. I cut her face out of orange felt and found two pieces of black and gold shiny material sewn together that were perfect for hair.

Her gown was see-though with little salmon roses and garlands running along in stripes. I put a black background behind her gown to make her look more whole.

The tent shaped background reminded me of the Red Tent group that celebrates feminine mysteries and so by adding deep red colored gauze the red tent appeared around my lady.

Catching the Soul of her Baby to Be

To me she looks like some kind of divine feminine figure, but not quite a traditional Mary figure. How exciting to have a way of expressing the joy of pregnancy, and to celebrate both the holiness and earthiness of motherhood.

When I finished her, I realized that I could tell stories in cloth, and this was a great medium to tell some of my internal stories that were coming out for the Internal Family Systems therapy, I'd been doing with my guide Joanne Gaffney. Once I realzied this I have never been without inspiration for the next piece of art I would make.

Many thanks to this amazing process of making internal external and to the way the elements work together to give suggestions on how to proceed. These suggestions or nudges, that may come from a pile of fabric on the floor, or an idea or the composition of the piece make me feel I'm really involved in joyous co-creating

Finally in the middle of 2011 she was satisfied and this wall hanging has stayed finished since then.

Then I could see how to make the soul of the baby come from heaven twisting from the baby’s spirit umbilical cord. It expresses an idea that feels right to me. We choose our parents as unborn souls who come from heaven to be reincarnated. Miraculously we parents also choose our children. We make these choices so we can be each other’s teachers for the lessons we most need to learn to evolve and to become enlightened.

I gave this mother extra big spirit hands of the salmon see-through material to make sure she could catch her intended child.

This all came together pretty easily with some tweaks to the baby and the heavenly opening. But then the wall hanging sat.

Finally I got the message that the lady wanted more ornament around her frame. First I added the roses like the ones on her gown to the pink ribbon that made the frame.

But she wanted more so I added cut strips of red circle and flower decorations to make an inner border. And still she wanted more. So she got two more rows of different color circles and flowers inside that, and some decoration in the sky.

Finally she seemed satisfied.