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The odyssey of The Thread Project: One World, One Cloth began in 2001. Since then, seven world cloths, pictured below, representing the seven continents, materialized from the individual threads gathered world-wide.* Each cloth is seven panels wide which required 49 looms to weave all the cloths. Forty-nine women in 14 countries dressed their looms often inviting others to throw a pick (weave a row of thread into cloth). Tens of thousands of people have helped create one of the most awesome and diverse fabrics ever woven. Each cloth is a different color of the color spectrum and has been given a name that represents the theme of that particular cloth. Founder Terry Helwig shares some of her thoughts about the history and symbolism of the woven cloths.
*Toward the end of the weaving phase, more thread was received than could be woven; these threads have been wound into an earth-ball, which resembles the earth from outer space. The large ball of thread accompanies the cloths on exhibit.
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Since the beginning of time, cloth has chronicled the passages of human life; cloth has swaddled babies, adorned brides, and covered the dead. Cloth has been reverenced as prayer shawls, sacred blankets, tabernacle veils, wedding tents and symbols for national pride. A piece of cloth can identify a family, a community or a nation. Such is the potency of cloth. And such is the potency of the seven World Cloths being woven by The Thread Project: One World, One Cloth.
The World Cloths are a repository of human experience and goodwill; each thread is spun with the story of the individual who sent it. After reading hundreds of letters, I am convinced that we are weaving more than cloth; we are also weaving a social fabric that celebrates diversity, encourages tolerance and promotes compassionate community.
What better way to symbolically mend our world than with a thread? The modest thread is an archetype for the genesis of new life, resonating powerfully in the human psyche. Thread imagery appears in physics, biomedicine, astronomy and myth. From the subatomic Super String Theory of physics to DNA, which is commonly referred to as the ‘Thread of Life;’ to the astronomical observations of cluster galaxies forming threadlike filaments, it seems life, as we know it, hangs by threads. Countless creation myths tell us that the stars, clouds, sun, earth and moon sprang forth from a heavenly shuttle. Realizing, too, we all slipped into this world, threaded to our mother, one begins to sense that life and thread are close companions.
Hope Materializing
Purple Cloth
It’s not surprising that the World Cloth named Hope Materializing symbolizes hope. Most of us are familiar with Pandora, who supposedly opened a jar (in some versions, a box), and loosed the ills of the world. However, we don’t hear much about Elpis. Elpis, whose name means hope, was clinging to the rim of Pandora’s empty jar. Elpis cried out to be set free, because she knew that a world without hope is a world condemned to despair.
One of my favorite quotes comes from novelist Barbara Kingsolver who says, "The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof." We at the Thread Project wanted to weave a cloth of hope, thread by thread. The first panel of Hope Materializing was begun in 2002. Watching threads transform into cloth filled me with the hope that the threads of life, be they kindness or cotton, can and do make a difference in this world. No act of goodwill is ever too small to be measured.
The threads people send make this abundantly clear. The threads for Hope Materializing were woven in classrooms in Pennsylvania and Georgia, at an international conference for conflict resolution, and in personal studios in Georgia, Colorado, Tennessee and South Carolina. One panel was woven in Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala by a Mayan woman, weaving on a backstap loom; villagers gathered around to watch her weave a cloth of hope.
Also, in 2002, clay artist Susan Ryles came up with the idea of buttoning the panels together. Susan created and crafted beautiful clay buttons inscribed with the word hope in more than a dozen languages including Sanskrit, Swahili, and Serbian. Elpis speaks many languages.
These days, when Hope Materializing hangs, a hush often befalls the viewers. It's as if the threads and buttons are telling a story. Maybe they are saying we must set hope free; we must live inside her; we must give birth to a new fabric for our world.
Threaded Harmony
Red Cloth
Harmony, from the Greek harmonia, means to join or fasten; harmony brings differences together into a unified whole. Every thread we receive at The Thread Project represents one person who wants to participate in this international project. It might seem at first that these threads don’t belong together, that they are in fact, discordant. How can tatted lace, shoe-strings, feathers, yarn, strips of clothing, embroidery floss, rope, twine, a piece of wedding veil, cassette tape, fishing lines, animal fur and ribbons come together?
It is magical to watch these fibers, which have been tied together, be woven into cloth--a diverse cloth, to be sure, but a beautiful cloth of intense complexity and unparalleled diversity. It is quite inspiring to witness all the different fibers coming together into a harmonious whole. It makes you believe that it is possible for disparate views, differences and challenges to be woven into a unified social fabric, diverse and strong enough to face the planetary challenges of the 21st century.
The bamboo buttons on Threaded Harmony were provided by Carole Meckes and others from the Bamboo Arts and Craft Network in Texas. Since many flutes are made of bamboo, the buttons symbolize the wind-song of harmony. They suggest the playing of a melody, created from an array of different notes, pointing once again to the beauty of differences finding relationship in song. The flutes also remind us to attune ourselves to the environment and the world at large.
Hundreds of people, children and adults, had a hand in helping to weave Threaded Harmony. Looms were set up in classrooms, studios, libraries and a county fair in Florida, Minnesota, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. Winona Middle school in Winona, MN had students act as thread ambassadors when they traveled to their sister school in Japan to bring back threads that were woven into Threaded Harmony. Two schools wove miniature panels of their own to hang in their school as a constant reminder of their participation in The Thread Project.
To date, thousands of threads from over 70 countries and the seven continents have made their way into the weavings. They have created threaded harmony, a cloth-song of humanity.
Ariadne’s Prayer
Indigo Cloth
In Greek myth, Ariadne gifted Theseus with a ball of thread to help him navigate the Cretan labyrinth. Theseus unraveled the ball, leaving a trail of thread that later helped him find his way. Not so long ago, another Greek woman, a weaver named Eleni Pavlou, gifted sixty-five children and adults in Poros, Greece with an opportunity to weave balls of thread into a panel of Ariadne’s Prayer.
Eleni sent pictures of the Greek children weaving at the loom, astonishment registering on their faces. Evidently, watching their threads materialize into cloth seemed miraculous. In one photograph, eight children wind around one of the panels twisting and turning, creating a human labyrinth of arms and legs. Eleni wrote: We thank you for giving us the happiness of being part of The Thread Project. To be thanked for receiving another’s generosity is humbling. It is we who say thanks to Eleni and to the thousands of others who have participated in The Thread Project; we appreciate the trail of goodwill they have woven.
In our complex world, with differing views, ideologies and customs, navigating our differences can be confusing. Sometimes we lose our way. Ariadne’s Prayer is a simple prayer. It is a prayer that humanity will find its way through the twists and turns of becoming a global society. It is a prayer that the humble act of gathering threads and weaving them together will help us wind our way toward one another, instead of away. It is a prayer for pilgrims, seeking a path to peace.
The indigo warp symbolizes using our intuition to help us find our way. Other panels of Ariadne’s Prayer were woven in the small Indian village of Bhandarigaon; by students in a Special Education class in Zeeland, Michigan; by Hmong, Vietnamese and Filipino women living in Minnesota; by a weaver’s guild in New Jersey; by students in Delray Beach, Florida; and in a studio in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Weaving Reconciliation
Green Cloth
One fiber woven into Weaving Reconciliation comes from the Killing Fields in Cambodia. It is a thin, tattered, once-white slip of material, perhaps the remnant of an article of clothing. Erin, the young woman who sent the thread, wrote: I dedicate this thread to all who died there. In Legacy of the Heart, Wayne Mueller relays the story of ten thousand Cambodian refugees who gathered for the first time to pray after being displaced from their homeland. A monk began chanting and soon thousands, many of whom had lost family members on the Killing Fields, joined in and began weeping. Over and over they chanted: Hatred never ceases by hatred; but by love alone is healed. This is an ancient and eternal law. Hatred never ceases by hatred; but by love alone is healed…
A single thread connects that scene to another scene in a small farming community in Iowa, where a woman named Dixie gathers with her friends to make bandages. The women tear bed sheets into strips, roll them and send them overseas to be used as bandages. These women wrote to the Project asking if one of their bandages could be woven into one of the World Cloths. Their bandage arrived about the same time as Erin’s thread. Both threads lay curled beside each other: one a witness to wounding, the other a witness to healing.
Somewhere, woven into the threads of Weaving Reconciliation, a bandage from Iowa is knotted snuggly against a sliver of cloth from Cambodia, connecting Dixie and her friends to a woman named Erin, and a person who died needlessly in a distant field. And so it goes. I am connected to you. You are connected to me. When we are reconciled to this great Truth, the distance between us evaporates.
Hatred tries to silence love; but, she is not easily silenced. Weaving Reconciliation honors those who seek to reconcile the wide distance between right and wronged, those who bandage the world’s brokenness, and those who retaliate not with their fists but with their heart. Hatred never ceases by hatred; but by love alone is healed.
The green warp symbolizes new life, rising from the ashes. One panel of Weaving Reconciliation was woven as a symbol of healing and reconciliation in Sioux Lookout, Ontario as part of their Race Relations Week. Panels were also woven in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Idaho, Israel, a library in Indiana, Kansas and Pennsylvania.
Dawn Looming
Orange Cloth
Dawn marks a new day, a fresh beginning, a new possibility for change. Poems and songs that evoke this time of day are called aubades. Dawn Looming is a cloth aubade of sorts, weaving together the multi-hued strands of hope that rise against the darkness. We receive many threads from people looking toward the horizon, waiting for the day humanity learns to live in compassionate community. One thread came from a student in a Florida school that invited students to hold a thread to their heart before tying them together to send to the Project. The student wrote: I envisioned the future…sending intense feelings into my thread as I thought of a world with no war. Another thread came from Nanette who wrote: Sometimes the smallest of things can create an uproar in the universe. May this weaving create an uproar of peace.
Two decades ago, a group of scientists and scholars from around the world gathered to discuss and draft the Seville Statement on Violence. The scholars concluded that human biology does not condemn humanity to war. The group ended their statement with what some might consider a radical notion. These scholars and scientists proclaimed: The same species who invented war is capable of inventing peace.
Visionaries are often gifted with an ability to see the dawning of a new paradigm before others waken. Oscar Wilde says it poignantly: A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. While some of us slumber in a collective sleep, the dreamer and the visionary see hues of possibility streaking the horizon. It takes vision: to uproot the entrenched idea that humanity is condemned to war; to create new modalities for settling differences; to marry progress with concern for the environment.
Dawn Looming invites us to awaken, throw open the mind’s shutters, and herald the future with an aubade: Come sweet morning, water me with the dew of compassion, lift the hem of darkness, help me invent peace.
The orange warp symbolizes potential and the coming of awaited joy. Panels of Dawn Looming were woven in Australia, British Columbia, California, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and by groups of children in Connecticut and Georgia.
Lienzo Luminoso (Cloth of Light)
Yellow Cloth
One of our weavers Margarita Lainez, from El Salvador, helped name Lienzo Luminoso which means Cloth of Light. For centuries, lights and lanterns have been used to dispel darkness, radiate guidance and mark the way to safe shores. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was the Lighthouse of Alexandria which guided ships into the harbor, reflecting light from an open fire at night and sunlight by day.
My personal association to light shining in the darkness takes me back to my grandpa’s Texas farm. For as long as I can remember, Grandpa never failed to switch on the porch light when he was expecting us to arrive late at night. Amid the elbows and knees of my sleeping sisters, I often pressed my face against the car window and wrapped myself in the comfort of that distant yellow glow, guiding us across the branch, past my favorite oak tree and, finally, to the foot-worn boards on the painted porch.
Lienzo Luminoso is a porch-light piercing the darkness. It burns brightly with prayers for the world, gestures of hope, and tributes to the radiance of love. One of Lienzo Luminoso’s threads comes from a mother named Jayne, who lost her young son Joshua to cancer. Jayne sent us a piece of yarn from Joshua’s baby blanket. She wrote: This blanket has great meaning to me…now Joshua will continue to live on in my heart, and in these beautiful woven threads of so many people’s lives and loves. Jayne’s love for Joshua radiates from Lienzo Luminoso, helping the heart to see.
May this cloth of woven light steer us toward safe harbor, and to the painted, worn porch of love.
The yellow warp symbolizes safety and warmth. Three panels of Lienzo Luminoso were woven on the Australian continent by a warm, enthusiastic group of weavers from Old Bar, Maleny and Beeliar. One panel was woven in Budapest Hungary, and another in Ghana, Africa. Two panels were woven in the United States in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Wimberley, Texas.
Sophia’s Mantle
Blue Cloth
At different times in history many communities have gathered to work on a single cloth. In America it was a quilt at the quilting bee; in Thailand it is a large red cloth sewn and wrapped around the stupa; in ancient Greece it was a garment called a peplos, which was woven every four years for Hera by sixteen women from differing towns. Weaving transforms separate, disparate threads into a unified whole. The sword divides; the shuttle weaves together. The world is in need of a great shuttle.
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, weavers from around the world joined together to weave a communal cloth -- one cloth for one world. The name Sophia means wisdom and is meant to imply that a communal fabric of wisdom needs to be woven by people of many faiths from many lands. Such a cloth can help bridge the gap between us and them; between I and we; between mine and ours. Turquoise warp was chosen for Sophia’s Mantle because turquoise is a bridge color, bridging the blue of heaven with the green earth.
Threads of many colors have found their way into the cloths, threads of remembrance and threads of compassion. But, perhaps, one of the most unique artifacts to be woven into the cloths is the sturdy wooden shuttle, woven into Sophia’s Mantle. It is the same shuttle that wove both the first and last row of cloth, bridging a span of five years; it is the shuttle that wove in threads of four 9/11 families, bridging the divide between family and strangers; it is the shuttle that wove together threads of compassion, bridging the gap between tragedy and hope. If wisdom were to choose a scepter, she would, no doubt, reach past the sword and clasp in her hand a sturdy wooden shuttle.
Panels of Sophia’s Mantle were woven in California (2), England, Georgia, Lesotho, South Africa, and South Carolina.
Each 12' x 7' world cloth is made by "buttoning" together seven panels, woven by different weavers. Click for more information about the individual weavers or thread stories.
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