another prayer cloth

I made a small quilt this month.  I'm calling it dream cloth.  

The name comes from Paul Klee's quote about imagination that is pinned on my studio wall.       

                "I dream and my soul awakens. Imagination is the star."       Paul Klee

The red Japanese Azumino cotton and the pink linen have been in my stash for a couple of years.  Putting them together in this piece was an impulsive decision.  I didn't think about it.  I reacted to the two colours together with my heart.         

Hand pieced and then hand quilted. 

I used big thread (pearl cotton) to quilt the star and regular hand quilting thread (black) from YIL to quilt the welsh circles and leaves in the surround.   

I've been wanting to try this type of quilting for a long time.    

You can see the design more clearly from the back of the quilt.  (silk fabric) (wool batt)   

I was glad to have it in the car when we went to Toronto to visit family in the middle of the month.  

The piece above is by Canadian artist, Anna Wagner Ott.  

It's the same colour as my dream cloth yet with an open heart shape. She called it Loving Red. 

I've admired Anna's work for a long time and am so glad to have been able to see one of her piece in real life at the World of Threads festival last fall.   

Anna Wagner Ott died in her sleep on Christmas night.  It was a sudden, unexpected death that shocked the textile community.  I feel as if I knew her, and although we did not meet, I am so sad that we are no longer able to be inspired by her constant making.  In 2022, Anna was interviewed by  fibre arts take two .  A tender obituary written by her daughters is on instagram, view it here.   

I like January because it seems empty after the bustle of the fall and then the holidays. This January seemed especially empty for me though and I was glad to have a solid, small quilt to complete. 

bundle of old sweaters

Veiled by Anna Wagner-Ott

we have hardly begun, we are already here

tiny red hearths 

she was born 2014, the quilt was finished in 2016

velvet shapes

she was born 2017, quilt was finished 2018

cotton pinwheels

she was born 2020

quilt not finished yet.  Pictured are front and back, hand pieced.

the 10 year old.

the seven year old

the almost four year old.  

indulge me

a language of care

The quilts I make are not clever.

They are not intellectual.

The quilts I make are love stories.

Remember this. 

Remember that quilts are love stories. 

Often, quilts are gifts. 

We sleep with them.

They touch us.

Quilts are a language of care. 

Quilts are not about the things that happen out in the world, 

Quilts help us recover from that world,

Quilts protect us when we sleep and dream.

Quilts also comfort the ones who make them.  

That is the language of care.

Your Fragile Life 

 old damask linen, natural dye, silk batting, silk backing and borders, cotton thread, 

entirely hand stitched, 70 x 68 inches,  2024.      

lucky pillow and pinwheel quilt

 

I put one of my embroideries into a pillow and called it the Lucky Pillow because seven is a lucky number and my granddaughter turned 7 last week.  

I finished it on the drive to Toronto to visit the family.

The seven year old has a 3 year old little sister and they play together.  Here they are playing with the small quilt that I am making for little sister.

It's made from hand pieced pinwheels, one of my favourite ways to place half square triangles together.  To up the playful feeling of my hand dyes, I visited local quilt shops and purchased some new printed fabrics for this wee quilt intended for a new person.  (she's only the ripe old age of 3)   

Suvi's quilt is one of the hand work projects I took with me to Mexico.  I loved being able to put the pieces into a baggie and sew it on the plane using a thread cutter rather than scissors or take the baggie with me to the beach or pool.  In the above photo, I am putting a nine-patch of pinwheels together in the lobby of the resort during a period of waiting for one of our families to arrive.  

I prepared this project beforehand with rotary cut squares that were machine pieced together with a single diagonal line.  I cut off half of the tiny square and discarded that part, then pressed the squares open.

It is a very portable and cheerful project.

   

This baby quilt is one of two hand work projects I took to Mexico, the other one being the one patch quilt I wrote about last week.

I keep looking at it on the wall because I am cautious about using too much red fabric.  I want a light as air feeling that's interesting far away and close up.  

  

The lucky pillow as a hat for grandad.

the pinwheel quilt.  xo

the world

I couldn't tell one song from another

which bird said what or to whom or for what reason. 

The oak tree seemed to be writing something using very few words. 

I couldn't decide which door to open

they looked the same.

or what would happen when I did reach out

and turn a knob

I thought I was safe, standing there

but my death remembered its date.

Only so many summer nights still stood before me,

full moon, waning moon,

October mornings: what to make of them?  Which door?

I couldn't tell which stars were which or how far away any one of them was,

or which were still burning or not - 

their light moving through space like a long, late train - 

And I've lived  on this earth so long.  70 winters.

70 springs and summers, 

and all this time stars in the sky - in day light

when I couldn't see them

and at night when, most nights, I didn't look.

The text in this post is The World, a poem by Marie Howe (slightly edited : 70 instead of 50)

The images are of my stitching these past few weeks.