Welcome back to our Summer of Re-Enchantment — if you don’t know, now you do.

If we’re going to talk about disenchantment / re-enchantment, we can’t ignore the naturally occurring binary that seems to appear between technological advance and esoteric practice. A disenchanted world is devoid of mystery — yes, science seems to have the answer to any question one can produce, but there’s also a bafflingly lack of curiosity and general geospatial awareness that happens when one is entrenched in or distracted by tech that never turns off. [When your eyes aren’t open, of course you can’t see. ]

It feels safe to argue that COVID accelerated a new Hobbies Era™️ for many a millennial girlboss, and I feel with the rapid progression of AI and technology the crush of interest in craft and hand-making isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Engaging in craft — using your hands, visualizing what you want to make in your mind’s eye, working slowly and methodically sometimes for days or weeks in order to create a final product — gives our consciousness so much space to slow down and imagine. To be bored, yes. But to also nurture different types of attention… maybe types of attention that allow us to see shimmers of the magical in our mundane worlds, but after too many years out of use have atrophied.

I’m a child of the 90s, a tie-dyed-in-the-wool craft lover whose propensity for DIY creativity was aided and abetted by her various Klutz kits and American Girl-Pleasant Company books. I come from a long line of women and men who can get real freaky with a handicraft, so when I learned that practicing the hobbies/skills of your family lineage is a type of ancestor veneration, it made a lot of sense to me.

So for this week’s Summer of Re-Enchantment suggestion, I wanted to encourage you to make a magical object: a tarot deck ceremonial altar cloth. This is a v v easy DIY that also happens to be a fabulous summer solstice celebratory craft, too, if you needed something to do that didn’t involve journaling.

The object acts as the carrying case for a deck you’re working with and opens up to form a mini altar you can take with you anywhere.

YOU’LL NEED

• 1 yd of fabric — for more protection, use a heavier fabric, or double up fabrics

• ruler

• scissors

• 1 yd of ribbon

• needle and thread (embroidery floss could work, too) or sewing machine

	Ceremonial Traveling Tarot Cloth Sewing ... 90.4KB ∙ PDF file
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INSTRUCTIONS

Print out the pattern or follow the technical drawing measurements to trace your altar cloth onto your piece of fabric. This pattern fits a large or small tarot deck comfortably.

For this example, I’ve used a piece of heavy canvas that I painted. If you want to use a thinner fabric like a cotton lawn, consider cutting out two altar cloth pieces and sewing them together around the edges, then turning inside out to finish the seams — this will create a more sturdy cloth. Alternatively, fold over the edges of the fabric by 1/4”, the fold over once more and sew the edge hem down using a sewing machine or blanket stitch.

Decorate your altar cloth however you’d like. Draw, pain, embroider, add buttons or charms, sew in pictures of your loved ones who’ve passed or pictures of saints / deities using a blanket stitch.

Find the middle the ribbon. Tack the middle to the back side of your cloth one inch up from the bottom hem. Sew to secure.

Let me know if you make this :) Happy Summer Solstice!