the front and then the back

Counting my blessings 2000  velveteen and cotton quilt 85 x 80 inches

Counting My Blessings (verso)  2000  embroidered cotton, hand quilted 85 x 80 inches

Today Yesterday Tomorrow  1994  painted and pieced cotton hand dyed quilt,
hand embroidery, hand quilted  76 x 72 inches

Today Yesterday Tomorrow (verso) 1994  cotton and embroidered grocery list,
hand quilted 76 x 72 inches

Something More Magical Than It Ever Was 1991 family clothing and silk, log cabin quilt
with photo transfers and painted cloth, 90 x 90 inches

Something More Magical Than It Ever Was (verso)  1991  transfer printed satin and cotton
with hand embroidery 90 x 90 inches 

My Children 1987 painted hand pieced silk from my mother's blouses,
rick rack and polyester border, hand quilted  crib quilt size

My Children (verso)  1987 hand pieced silk and polyester from my mother's blouses, 
 hand quilted , crib quilt size

The quilts in this post are  from my early days of quilting.  They are for the new archive page on my website, (judithemartin.com) which will go live there next month.  

Thank you to the family members and collectors who loaned pieces back to me so that they could be photographed digitally.  Thank you Nick for taking the photos.  Thank you Zoe, for helping me get them onto the website.

I made quilts to save and nurture my creative self.  I started in my early 20’s. I will continue to make them and I am thankful. 

Beauty Emotion Spirit Soul

Beauty, Emotion, Spirit, Soul

When I was studying for the Embroidery degree from Middlesex University I had to develop a thesis.  I was encouraged to look around me, at art and at nature, and discover what it was that made an impact on me.  To identify it. And then to make my work using that thesis as a constant guide.

I looked at paintings and world textiles and American quilts and realized that it was the simplest ones that I loved the most.  The ones that relied on emptiness and repetition and a sense of space.   I looked at nature and identified how I felt when I looked at new growth in the spring fields and forests where I lived.  And how I felt when I looked across the body of water in front of our house into the empty not empty sky and the ducks swimming in the gentle ripples.

Beauty Emotion Spirit Soul reverse side

And developed my thesis:  Large Emptiness.  Small marks.  The feeling rather than the representation. 

I made a set of sketches using fabrics I was saving in my studio.  The sketches were all square, 13 inch  pieces of cloth that combined with other pieces of cloth and some thread and sometimes holes placed in them inspired by the sketches I'd made over time in my notebook.  The idea was that they were mock ups for what could be large-scale textiles.  100 inches square.  

When I graduated in 2012 from Middlesex University, my graduate exhibition was one large empty square that held many hand stitched small marks.  See it here as the cover image of my website; title is Monumental Simplicity.  Then seven years later in 2019, I used eighteen of those fabric sketches to make the fabric construction in this post.  Beauty Emotion Spirit Soul sold before I had a good photo of it but I contacted the collector last March and told her about my project to document my older work.  She happily agreed to loan it back to me for professional photography and now I am pleased to have these photos by Nick Dubecki and am sharing them here.