Have a PLAYful JOYful Improv Quilting Summer!
Ever since my teens JOY has been a more difficult emotion to access than sorrow or anger. Sometimes it seems that JOY only runs as high as my sorrow deep and to experience the depth of joy requires a full embrace of the passion/suffering it contains.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that JOY isn’t a simple or easy emotion to experience. That may have been why I always chafed as a teen and early adult when my mother would say, “I just want you to be happy!”
JOY is so important for healing, and there is a load of healing work to do this liminal summer as we crawl out of our pre-covid cocoons, blink our eyes and spread our wings into a world we no longer recognize and are paying attention to in new ways.
PLAY is a part of that healing, because play is a pathway for tapping our JOY. Kids know how to play and have fun… and while they are at it, they are learning and growing effortlessly, by simply following their curiosity, and pursuing the activities and relationships that engage them wholeheartedly.
We are young butterflies looking for our hearts!
And this summer in BravePatch we are all about PLAY as a practice for cultivating an open flexible mind, tapping into joy and discovering our truth… through the way we make patterns of course! Come play along with us.
Put on your curiosity wings and pull out your scraps of many colors!
First we have a new flexible pattern challenge, the Dot & Line Score by BravePatch member Robin Strauss. It’s inspired by an animation from the 60’s about a straight line in love with a dot who is in love with a squiggle and how the line learns to transform to capture the Dot’s attention.
Robin’s Dot & The Line score prompts us to look at our relationships through the lens of shape. In first round playing with Robin’s score I imagined myself as a triangle and my sister as a curve…
I was totally surprised by the symbiotic nature of curves and triangles. Now my inner mathematician is saying “NO DUH” in response to my playful discovery. My response… Pardon me logical mind, discovering this truth through play on an experiential body and heart absorbing level allows me to fully integrate this knowledge not only in my pattern making with cloth but also through my relationship patterns with my sister!
Play is an essential mode for wholehearted learning…
SEW let’s not get 2 CEREAL about it!
In addition to the Dot & Line score, this summer in BravePatch we are focused on play for play’s sake. Play for fun, play for nurturing our curiosity, and play for tapping our joy, flow and beginner’s mind. Throughout the summer I will drop Play Prompts with playful process videos, for members to explore with abandon, and without a finished goal in mind beyond the experience of play… and adding to their pieced scrap bins as possible mashup fodder for this fall? Yes, stay tuned for an improv mashup workshop in October!
Join our BravePatch Groove of playful patchwork improvisers this summer and tap your JOYful heart along with us!
Not ready to sign up for BravePatch yet? Then sign up for my new monthly newsletter, Improv From The Heart, for improv inspiration, BravePatch Dispatches (sneak peaks inside) and livestream workshop alerts.
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