studio wall 2025

January

Prayer Cloth: Dream

I have a small studio at home that used to be the bedroom of our two youngest daughters.  All that it has in it now are shelves and chests for my cloth and journals, an armchair and a pinwall.   The pinwall helps me to create my quilts.  It also is where I block them when they are finished.  In this post, the 10 finished quilts I made in 2025.  

The title for the January quilt comes from something I think that Carl Jung said.  "I dream and my soul awakens, Imagination is the star."  

February

Mermaid and Troll

A painting that our daughter Grace made when she was about 6.  Paintings made with a special kind of dye on paper can be transferred with an iron to polyester and I made a quilt for her twin girls with the fabric painting I'd saved for so long. 

March

Cape of Rain

I un-did alll the cloak-sculptures that I made for In the Middle of the World (the exhibition I had with colleague Penny Berens ) and returned them to their original 2-dimensional shapes.  I pinned them to my design wall and re-titled them all.  This one, a distressed wool blanket full of holes, was entitled Flowers Bloomed in the exhibit.  Now for me, it is not so much a protection cloak against the rain, but one that contains the sadness of climate crisis. 

April

Prayers for the Twenty-first Century

I've loved the poem A Prayer For the Twenty-first Century by John Marsden since I read an illustrated version of it in 1998.  In 2017, I created a large flag-like textile from some red thread embroideries that I named after the poem. These four are from that piece that I took apart, reworked and then mounted on squares of white wool.       

May

The Day, The Night, and then The Day Again

I finished this two-sided quilt in time for it to be included in my summer exhibition, The Sky, at the Art Gallery of Sudbury.  Completely reversible, I wanted to show how there are many stars in the sky that we don't see during the day.  I also wanted to show the reassurance that we receive from the sky because every day comes back again after a long dark night.  

June

All The Lived Emotions

Another piece that is an evolution from a previous one.  In 2023, I made 42 'mothering bundles' from saved items and showed about 17 of them in the Stardust exhibition in the Gore Bay museum that summer.  This past June, I covered 14 of them with cloth gleaned from unfinished projects or failed online purchases for The Sky exhibition and gave these few a new title.  

July

Sky With Many Moons

Another piece that I finished up in time to show in my exhibition in Sudbury.  I've actually been working on this one for at least ten years.  In 2019 I thought it was finished.  (see here) .   

August

Not a new finish, but a new experience for me was to have my work featured in an important Canadian Poetry journal.  There is a ten page spread with images of my recent work as if they are each poems and Starry Starry from 2023 is on the front cover.  

  

September

Baby Floor Quilt

This is a true 2025 quilt because I began and finished it during the summer to celebrate April's friends who have started having babies.  Floor Quilts are practical gifts for newborns and her friends will share this one.

October

Two In-Progress pieces 

I'm excited about these two, as well as the several others that only got part way done in 2025.  

November

Sunflower Sky

The title of this one was inspired by the great artist Anselm Kiefer who often works with sunflowers in his large scale work.  There are several metaphysical and metaphorical reasons why he uses them but the simple description of a field of giant sunflowers that he planted in the South of France is what moved me to change the title of this piece from Sky Full of Stars to Sunflower Sky.  He speaks about lying down in the middle of the field and looking up at the ripe sunflowers with their bending-down heads.  He thought that the flowers resembled stars in the sky.  There is a White-cube reel on Instagram with this short talk, Here.

December

My Trembling Heart

At first I called this small piece Paris in February, because I took it with me when Grace and I visited that city, and was able to stitch it in the Jardin du Luxembourg.  I changed the title to My Full Heart after I drew that circle in the center.  Once I realized that the fluttering tiny cloth sequins are my favourite part, I changed the title once more.  I finished it on the last day of 2025. 

Thank you for reading this entire post.  Reflecting on these images caused me to realize that my work is always changing or growing, and never really finished. I think this is a hopeful way to be.  So with these pieces from my full heart, I send you each good wishes for 2026.  Carry on bravely my friends.