Not from the Real World

Yesterday,  I woke up and spread my Dresden plate quilt on the table.

Then I made a schedule for the five days I have before the Birmingham festival of quilts show is picked up from my house on Manitoulin  Island, Canada for delivery to England.

Saturday June 22:   Mend these Dresden Plate appliques with velvet. 

Sunday 23 - Wash and block this large quilt.  Finish making all display sleeves.  

Monday 24 - Make a list of the fourteen pieces.  Include measurements, insurance values and updated titles and send it to the organizers.  Finish all remaining sewing.  Begin folding quilts with tissue paper and plastic bags.  Start packing the boxes.  

Tuesday June 25 - Finish boxing up the exhibition with care.  Label everything. 

Wednesday June 26-  The boxes will be picked up between 10 am and 5 pm.

At the moment, the exhibition is stacked on chairs around the house.    

I've worked so hard for this solo show.  I've worked 10 hours a day for over a year.  

I've been able to do it by working on three different pieces each day for one week, and then switching to three new ones the following week.  I've had to abandon a few that I just couldn't finish.

Most of the pieces are large scale. Most are very simple, and have grids of dots or circles.

They are abstract, folk-like.  They are not representational.

Not from the real world.  Not from the news.

The quilts in this exhibition seem to be a throw back to a simpler time.   

The quilts in this exhibition speak the traditional language of quilts.  

They use traditional patterns.  They use fabrics that come to hand such as sewing scraps, repurposed domestic fabrics, and pieces of clothing.

The fabrics in the Dresden Plate quilt have faded.  Some of them are worn out and need replacing.  Why?  They are all at least fifty years old.  The fabrics in the applique's are from my high school and early marriage sewing projects.  I unpicked the circles from the worn white cotton that was the original background of a quilt I made as a bride, and placed them onto new squares of silk, linen, or lightweight wool cloth.  

I remember that sensuous time in my youthful life every time I touch one of those fabrics.

Now, touching the velvet replacement patches will send me off into a different kind of dream world.  

I look forward to sleeping with this quilt once the show is done.  The new title of the Dresden Plate quilt is You are a Single Star.

C.G. Jung called the circle and square combination a metaphor for the inner life.

celebration quilt

I finished my indigo checkerboard quilt last week.  

The one I've been working on for nine years.  Completely hand pieced from muslin and commercially indigo dyed cotton, using the nine patch method.  

I took it with me on all the trips that Ned and I have made over the last decade.  Whether plane or car, I pieced it and then hand quilted it.

It nurtured me through the pandemic as I quilted it in its hoop.

In a way, it is a celebration.

I'm glad that I finished it this year - the year that Ned and I celebrate our 50 years of marriage.

It is also the year that the family cottage turns 100 years.

our sleeping cabin 

We slept under it for three nights to celebrate all those things.  

It fits the Amish four poster bed that Ned made for the annex.

the dining room

This cottage, with it's old wooden furniture and floors and crooked windows has a timeless quality. 

the middle bedroom of the main cottage

the front bedroom of the main cottage

Our daughter April thrifted this quilt top and then hand quilted it.

the living room looking towards the dining room

the living room looking towards the bedrooms

looking into the kitchen from the dining room

Puckwana cottage today

the drawing I made on our honeymoon, 1973

Celebrate life my friends.

summer time

Happy Summer from Canada.

Wishing you imagination, 

water play,

and lots of quilts.   xo

let my heart out

 I think I'm finished with mending this old quilt. 

It's on our bed, helping us through the winter nights.

I've put strips of white velvet to cover the worn out edges. 

Velvet is now the first thing you touch when you pull the blanket up,

and if your hand strays a bit over the surface, it finds a velvet egg shape the size of an adult hand.    

Just the right size to make you think, eyes shut, 

in the middle of the night, that the whole thing is velvet.  

That you are covered over with softness.

It's very luxurious.  It's dreamy.

I didn't use a pattern to organize the large dotted mends.

I just began covering the worn out cloth, hole by hole.    

I think it might be art. 

I know that it's a dream cloth.  

It's thick and puffy,

unusual for me. 

It has heft.  

I put new cloth into an old worn out thing with the intent of giving it new life.

Egg shapes.  Bright colour.  Easter stories.

Eggs symbolize the greatest of mysteries. 

Last year, when the pandemic was still young and there was so much fear,

I mended this same white whole cloth quilt's other side with a layer of wool batt 

and a layer of silk fabrics dyed with avocado stones.

I just laid them over the wrecked quilt and followed the blue stitching lines to attach them.    

Images of that other side are here.   

We have been sleeping very well because of this quilt.    

We feel cared for.

It is unusual for me to make such large marks without planning their placement on a design wall. 

I found the holes to cover one at a time with the quilt in my lap.    

I had to trust.  

I can't be afraid.

I am unafraid.

The problems we are facing in this world are so large.  They are immense.

I am so sorry.

I want to work and work and mend and mend.

I want to bring softness and hope to our lives.  Our ordinary lives.  Our precious lives.

My hands help me let my heart out unblocked by my mind.

I need to be immediate.  I need to cover big areas with softness and newness and touch. 

I am connecting something old to something new and I am being brave and it is becoming gentle.    

And my love is poured out upon the earth. 

Gaea 

a universe

The light is changing.

There is morning light in our bedroom.

I'm reading:  Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles and

Where the Heart Beats by Kay Larson (about John Cage)

In the evenings I'm watching: Steve McQueen's Small Axe series 

This post is just photos of four quilts piled on our bed.

I don't have any words to go with them.  

I guess my thoughts are in my quilts this week.

They are a kind of universe.

overwhelmed by everything

It's the weekend and I am resting.

 my fragile self

During this pandemic summer, I've sunk into Louise Penny's series about Armande Gamache.

While in the midst of serious internal growth, respect your need to rest.  Yung Pueblo

"You can't be three people"  Agnes Martin tells us.

simplicity unafraid

Q:   What was your route to becoming an artist?

A:  I will answer this question, but it will take several posts.

I've been working steadily away for a long and rich time.   

The posts will include photos of my most current work as well as links. 

The links go back to earlier posts from this journal.

These are the inspirations that helped me find my voice as an artist. 

Amish Quilts

Women who originally designed our traditional North American quilt patterns  inspired by the awesomeness of nature

Women who designed the traditional patterns inspired by the connection to the bed.  (This link goes to more autobiographical info so be warned. 

I have been maintaining this blog for 14 years.  So much has happened in the world in that short time.  Take good care my friends. xo  

so much is embedded in these marks

the front of this piece is plant dyed cotton flannel

I like producing my own work slowly over a lengthy period of time and allowing it to change along the way.

the reverse is ancient flannel bed covers

I am mesmerized by the work of it.
by the steady rhythmic marking.

 So much is embedded in those marks.

 Time for one thing, the time it takes to place them.

Touch for another.

The silence, but also the quiet sounds of the mark making itself.

What interests me is very very simple and quiet

front

and marked repeatedly with the human hand.

back

I was here.  I made this.
Feel my touch.

and remember me.

text from my 2010 journal that I re-read for 3rd time in August
images are of a work in progress