Stitching Buddhas by the Beach

I felt a bit jet lagged on Monday, though I’d only traveled across the street. But what a journey it was!

Students had come from three continents to stitch and meditate together at the second annual Stitching Buddhas Retreat. (The first was in the hills of Tuscany last spring.)

This year we met in a house by the beach in southern California. The weather was cold and rainy.

(I know, I know, it never rains in southern California… except when I have international visitors!)

But the weather only obliged us to bring in more artificial light to shine on our silk. Everyone was happy to stay indoors, concentrated on improving their stitches, training their hands in the unfamiliar movements required to wrap a horsehair in thread and couch it to satin.

The participants were all Virtual Apprentices at various stages in the Stitching Buddhas Virtual Apprentice Program.

 

 

“I love to stitch because it slows me down, it calms me down, it keeps my restless hands busy. I tend to rush around a lot and get really caught up in my daily activities… But this is a chance to sit down and really relax… and to produce something at the end that’s really beautiful.”

— Linda Hayward, Santa Ana, CA

 

 

The program provides an online learning experience in the fundamental techniques of Tibetan appliqué. Written lessons and photographs are supplemented by video demonstrations, a private forum, and monthly Q&A calls. Students make a great start with these supports.

But there’s nothing like occasional one-on-one in-person instruction to catapult the learning process forward at key moments. I love working with dedicated students who have already grappled with the techniques and can immediately apply refinements.

And it’s so gratifying for me to see how meaningful this work is to the rare souls who dare to learn it.

This work is not easy. Maybe that’s obvious to all of you, but I forget it sometimes.

 

 

“The day I stumbled on to Leslie’s website a few years ago, I just about fell off my chair. I don’t even think I could speak for a couple of hours.”

— Louise Burnet Munoz, Pau, France

 

 

 

 

 

When I watch my students struggle to overcome their habitual muscle memory and learn new ways to hold their needle and use their hands, I have moments of doubt. And moments of fear.

Maybe this is just too hard. Will they give up?
Maybe they don’t have to do it my way. Should I let them find their own way?
Maybe I’m a lousy teacher.

But all of those doubts fade away as I allow the process to unfold.

I’m inspired by the commitment these women bring to bear on their practice. Watching them spend hours around the table, returning to work as soon as they’ve finished lunch, determined to have a breakthrough, to make their hands “get it,” I remember my own apprenticeship in India. I remember how I stayed in the workshop until the last possible moment before racing down the hill to arrive home before dark.

I remember setting myself back to work on my own projects after dinner, as I endeavored to master this art form in all its aspects.

And when my students, through their own experimentation, finally wrap a beautiful cord and stitch down a beautiful line…

when they say “Oh, NOW I see why you do it that way!”…

my confidence in the method is reinforced.

It’s not arbitrary. There IS a reason I hold my hands in a particular way. There is a reason I stitch toward my body, rather than crosswise as my students habitually tend to do.

It works.

It cooperates with gravity and with the qualities of my materials. It creates the smooth, beautiful, graceful lines that form the smooth, beautiful, graceful images that inspire with their beauty.

And with this beauty, and this experience, repeated and trusted, I come to see that I’m probably not such a bad teacher after all.

After four full days of stitching, at the end of our final meditation session on the last morning of the retreat, the students expressed an aspiration that others may find the Stitching Buddhas program and that they too may experience the deep pleasure (and challenge) of creating something meaningful with their hands, with their time, and with shimmering fabric.

 

 

“I feel like I’ve found the work that I’d put off while I was raising kids — something that I’ll be able to do as long as I can see and move a needle.”  — Heidi Virshup, Singapore