Going Slow

Mornings are slow lately.  It’s like I’m on pause.   I may wake up at 7:15 but it is 9:00 before I rise.  

The plant in the bedroom needs water so I carry it to the kitchen.  When I open the window above the sink and look out at the garden and the yard,  the staring begins.

I do more staring in my favourite chair with my coffee.  Things go through my mind as I stare. 

For example, there is a quilt on the wall that I stare at.  It's wearing out from old age, and I've started to mend it. 

'Mom, if you saw that quilt on someone else's instagram, you'd like it' says my daughter who doesn't think I should alter it.  

All the things I'd like to do overwhelm me and my head fills up with obligations.  Some of them are about the people I've reached out to and then let drop. 

My old journals are packed with ideas and sketches.  Really, why do I feel that I have to find new ideas? I have so many saved ones.

I also get snagged by social media.  I spent time looking at Emma Larsson's feed.  She is a self-taught Swedish artist who paints wet floral shapes from her imagination in uncanny ways.  I think this was a good thing for me.  I think it was.

I was going to finish reading the art book Unravel:The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art this morning.   That’s what I was going to do while in this chair.  

There are so many things to do that I want to do, but I just can't.  I stare at them and think about them, and then I think about something else, and then some one else and then a new thing. 

I have been so busy lately with my work and with my family.

Now, I wonder if it is really OK for me to not have time for anything but my work and my family.  To not have time for friends and hanging out and writing and responding to emails and listening to gossip and personal health problems with other women.  If it’s OK to not have time to walk near a river or sit in the grass and feel it touch my neck when I lie down on it because all I have time for is my work and my family. 

The images in this post are of the two nearly identical big-girl quilts that I'm making for the twins (now three and a half).  Except for images five and six which are of the SISU pillow I gave my almost 6-year-old granddaughter who started a new school last week. 

"What does SISU mean? asked her aunt."  

"Be Brave" she replied.   

The Mothering Bundles in Toronto

Since 2022, I have been tidying up items I've saved from my artist-mothering life by wrapping them in pieces of wool blanket.   

I call the resulting objects Mothering Bundles.

#33  

Each bundle has a number so that I can remember what is inside it because I forget what is inside a bundle almost as soon as I start stitching it shut.

Number 33 above contains:  Two maternity blouses that I embroidered, the small tea cloth that the young Brownies in Rainy River embroidered and gave me when I left my teaching job to move in with Ned and marry him.  Also contained in this same bundle are several friendship bracelets made by my daughters.

in the window, our daughter April's quilt, Spider Silk

Art is not just a respite or escape, it is a formidable tool for gaining perspective in troubled times.  Olivia Laing

I made a list of what is inside each bundle.  

So far, there are 38.  

It is an ongoing project and I hope to continue to bundle.

Sometimes, I need to open one up and retrieve an item so this list is valuable.  

(There is also a small green account book with written details about bundle contents).  

It is necessary to abolish distinction between art and life.  Marcel Duchamp  1957

the quilt on the wall is called Sunflower Sky

They are simple things, these bundles

They feel safe and calm.

They invite you to slow down and consider your own life.

They help you to connect to your inner self.

They are as mysterious as the stars in the sky.

#20

Number 20 (above) contains eleven canvas draw-string camping bags that Ned inherited from his cousin Richard.  Labelled with black ink, ( coffee, flour, white beans, rice, brown sugar, wheat porridge, candy, spices, milk powder and tea) they are in two sizes.  

from left to right:  Judy Martin's The Beauty of the Green Earth, some Mothering Bundles, and then April Martin's Neptune in Pices, Hourglass in the Sky, Same Same (above) and June Skies (below) Far right is Judy Martin's Lake Full of Stars.  

The images in this post are of the exhibition I had in Toronto this past summer with my artist daughter, April Martin.  We both exhibited hand stitched quilts.  

The exhibition was entitled Earlier and Later and it was held at the Craft Ontario gallery at 401 Richmond St, Toronto.  June 17 - July 25, 2026.

All photos in this post are professional documentation of the exhibition by Jocelyn Reynolds.

You have to follow your work even if it seeems ridiculous.  Follow your intuition.  Go with your work.  Kiki Smith

in relation to an inlet

My quilts are objects that come together from materials I can touch, but also from some kind of fantasy of what I hope and dream yet can not name.  

Slow to make, with many repetitive tasks that put me into a meditative state, they are listeners for the things I can’t say out loud in my normal life.  

When I made my first quilts, and even later, after I had been going along for years, I had a fantasy.  

My fantasy was about my own work.  I thought it was unusual.  

I thought that it was creative.  I knew that it was art.

But when I look now at what has been done and continues to be done by the giants of this immense world, I realize that my work is rather ordinary.  This realization does not mean that I am going to slow down or stop making it.  And it doesn't mean that I am going to stop having the fantasy that what I'm making is something new and true and different.  

It only means that I realize that I'm a speck, and that it is a big world.  

“I’m sorry for forgetting how small I was in relation to an inlet.  

  Every day is a last day, and it is more than enough.  Max Porter 

Briefly Gorgeous (my mended quilts)

Sunshine and shadow quilt 1987, given to my father for his 70th bithday in 1993
He went horizontal on it throughout the day and wore the fabrics out. 
I began mending it with velvet when I visited him, until he passed away in 2017.
I finished mending it in 2022 and the family loves to use it for comfort.

My sister got married in 1976 and I made her a quilt from new fabrics.  It is my second-ever quilt and is very badly made.  It started to fall apart from age, but also because of my beginner quilt making skills.
I asked her to give it back to me so that I could mend it and plan to use velvet this time too.
I hope to finish it by July as that would mark her 50th anniversary.

 

I Saw A Butterfly is a quilt I made in 1988
and gave to our middle daughter when she went to university.
It became very soft with use and the fabrics and batting were disintegrating, so first I taught her how to mend it, and then I finished mending it myself in 2022.  (with velvet of course)

Sometimes I mend quilts that I didn't make myself, and that is the case for this one.  It was a white whole cloth quilt, beautifully stitched with thick blue thread in a hearts and flowers pattern.  
I replaced the distingrated batting with two kinds of wool batting, one of which would felt, and I also replaced the white backing with a rayon and silk one dyed with plants.  
Poet in Love, mended 2022

There were many holes in the quilt and so I covered them with large brightly coloured velvet circles and ovals.  When I quiltedthe piece, I followed the original blue threads.  And then put the piece into the washer and the distortion happened. 
Poet in Love  Mended (or something like that) in 2022 

I made the dresden plates in the early 80's, probably 1982, and appliqued them to a white background made from old sheets.  We used the long rectangular quilt as a lawn blanket for sun bathing for a long time but when the white background fell apart, I unpicked the plates and appliqued them to squares of naturally dyed wool and silk.  I like how the plates are so faded and pastel, they are remnants from my high school and newly-wed sewing projects.  Those that disintegrated have been replaced with, you guessed it, velvet.  I finished mending You are a Single Star in 2024.

We've been using You Are a Single Star on our bed, and it has been lovely.  Large and heavy.

But just this week I discovered that the backing cloth is wearing out.  
The backing cloth is an old damask table linen that was mailed to me from a Canadian textile artist who was decluttering her studio.  I loved it because of its softness, and that quality gave me the title for my Festival of Quilts exhibition in 2024, Softer and Dreamier.  Now, I see that the backing cloth is fading away.  It is disappearing. 

But part of the reason why I think that quilts are such an important and profound art medium is because they are like the human body and will not last forever.  The fact that they carry their own death with them all the time, even while they care for my loved ones and are so beautiful while doing that, is what makes them authentic and meaningful for me.

Quilts are, to borrow from novelist Ocean Vuong, who wrote the exquisite book in 2019,
 Briefly Gorgeous.   
When I mend quilts, I am continuing the work of these visible, touchable documents about care.
I may be able to extend the life of them for 50 years or so if I used new cloth,
but cloth eventually gets old and wears out, no matter what we do.

Being present

 June 18:  The day we drive to Ottawa and begin the wedding.

June 23:  The wedding was a big success.  We leave for Puckwana today.  I couldn't find the card I wanted to give to Grace so I wrote a long letter to her instead.

June 24:  We are at the cottage and the sound of lapping water and bird song are loud.  Just us and the Alaska family here for a few days.  

June 25:  I played Racko last night with Ned and the two boys and won.  Maybe I'll try to let others win that game next time.  Ha ha.

June 26:  Rachel Cusk felt that she had entered another world in her book about being a mother, Life's Work.  

June 27:  The idea that patchwork can be a way to not worry.  If I make a lot of patchwork sections - a pile of them without worrying - and then just worry later whether they can fit together or not.  Don't worry first.  Worry last.

June 28:  We had a good sleep in our own bed although I had to add my heavy velvet quilt.  It worked.  First we go to Mike Shain's funeral, and then back to the family, all arriving by tomorrow.  

July 3:  A milestone for me because I swam at the back channel.  I was considering not coming back if I couldn't swim.  Baked two cakes and lay on the day bed with Suvi in the afternoon.  The cakes were for Grace's and my birthday.  Played Clue until late.  Aili won. 

July 4:   Jay gets up early and today he swam to Yrrah from Buffy's many times. I've been having more pain these last few days.

July 7:  I go into my stitching with my daydream mind and my intelligent hand, and ignore the body.

July 8:  You are here, alive, completely alive.  That is a miracle.  Thich Nhat Hanh

Included in the post are fragments from my written journal in combination with the sunlight and shadow quilt I took with me to the wedding and then the family cottage.  Life was turbulent and beautiful with all my children and grandchildren.    

journal entries from the middle of March

Sunday:  

Idea:  to work from the back, to use more colour, to cut silk in narrow strips, to couch it to the back.

I write this idea down before bed.    

Monday: 

Or, to cut holes into the circles on the back and reveal the inner black batt, and then stitch around them with black thread that would show on the front side.

To use coloured silk and chance and also holes and to work from the back with out knowing how the front will be affected.

Tuesday;

We made a trip to Lively for an 11:30 appointment for new computer glasses for me. 

I let the lady there pick them out.

The metaphysics of the ordinary.  The pared down aesthetic. Nothing strident.  Well made.  

Intensely worked surface. Not hard work, but careful work. Do not know how it will turn out.

Trust that it is going to work.

My work is about comfort and about the inner world and about the cosmic mystery.

It is not a call to action.  It is a call to reflection.

sun and moon of mine, you've come.

my sight, my hearing, you've come

ecstasy, you've come

eyes filled with sun, harvest of all my longing,

you've come.

desert bandit, penance breaker, silver moon beloved

you've come

Rumi

Wednesday: 

Went to book club today.   It was well attended.  Seven people.  We all liked the book.   Girl With a Pearl Earring.  Afterwards, I went to my studio in town.

Thursday: 

Poetry is an element in all my work.  Poems not to be read, but to be seen and touched without the need to understand them.  

Poetry arises from the desire to get beyond the finite and historical (the human world of violence and difference) in order to reach something transcendent.  (Ben Lerner )

Friday:  

Poetry comes from wanting to recognize a world where everything is connected.  Poems give a sense of prayer.  (Cecilia Vicuna)

Saturday:

We went to Sudbury yesterday.  It was a busy day.  A medical appointment for Ned.  A visit to see the gallery I'll be exhibiting in this summer.  

In my new quilt, I am couching long strips of silk around large unstitched circles.  I am loving the simplicity and the feeling that working this way gives me.  It's really slow.    I am enjoying my time spent with this piece.

I feel as if I'm painting or drawing - allowing my hands to do the thinking, not my mind.

Textiles are records of the every-day.  Textiles are records of endurance.  Textiles record the care and attention given to simple things that surround us. (Dorothy Caldwell)

Some souls have blue stars.  

Some souls have echoes of a burnt voice.

Crumbs of kisses.

Sobs from trees.

Tranquil whiteness.

Flocks of Songs.  

(selected words from several of Lorca's poems that he wrote in 1920)