Cushion Craft: The Great Circle Inside You
There’s something so calming about sitting down to make something new with your hands. That lovely feeling of loosing yourself for a few hours between the stitches or brushstrokes of a new project. Not to mention coming away with a tangible creation you can enjoy at home or gift to a friend.
Crafting is one of my wellness trends for the year, and the good news is you don’t have to be an artist or a professional to enjoy making things. Remember, years ago people didn’t do online shopping and they would have made many of the bits and bobs they needed at home. Like ceramic dishes, sweeping brooms or decorative blankets for example.
And what’s more, pre-netflix, people would also have sung tunes and put together little dances or plays to entertain one another of an evening. It’s only a recent thing that the arts have been seen more exclusively as a specialised field. It’s more than ok to be an amateur and enjoy yourself with a little mindful crafting.
I tend to lean towards poetry and nature based arts and I find they work well as pointers back to meditation when I teach workshops. But during those quiet months of 2020 I took a sewing for the home course and that was great fun. Especially as it was a brand new skill for me.
Since then I’ve spent more hours that I want to admit pouring over lush fabric choices at my favourite haberdasheries and picking out beautiful coloured buttons to add fresh joy to my coats and jackets. I also began experimenting with traditional meditation cushion design. You can try your hand at making one with me in the short tutorial at the end of this post.
How about you, do you have a hobby or craft that helps you unwind after a busy day?
With all this talk or sewing, circles and meditation, I thought it’d be just right to end our chat today with a few lines from the Sufi poet Hafiz.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
Translated by poet Daniel Ladinsky in his poem titled: All The Hemispheres taken from his much celebrated book The Gift.
