soft

 I wanted my quilt, Soft Summer Gone, to have a kind of timelessness, as if it has always been.

 I made it large and simple and open with emptiness.

 

 I coloured it with yellow golden-rod wildflowers gathered at the end of summer from the fields and ditches.

  I stitched it with large gestures that reached and crossed and with small circles that rose up.

 I wanted my viewer to yearn to touch the stitches and the soft cloth.

I hoped to cause a poetic experience deep within.

Quilt National sent our work back to us last week.
I unfolded her softly.  

time

a time to be born and a time to die
a time to plant and a time to uproot

a time to tear down and a time to build

a time to weep and a time to laugh
a time to mourn and a time to dance

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them
a time to embrace and a time to refrain

a time to search and a time to give up
a time to keep and a time to throw away

a time to tear and a time to mend
a time to be silent and a time to speak

a time to love
a time for peace

there is a time for everything
and a season for every activity under heaven                ecclesiastes 3:1-8

grand mum and aili  (us)

the stitching in this post are the 5 quilts that will show in this year's
world of threads festival...opening soon

four are on my new work blog, the fifth is Maia's quilt  Feel Invincible, Sweetheart

the left leg moving forward

I make quilts as a way to understand myself.
I start with my own experience and my own dream world.
If you find connections with your experience or your dream world through my work, then I have succeeded in something very special.

My life, my dreams,those moments hidden in every day life, all rise up as I stitch.

I consider things from the point of view of a mother.

Beauty makes us human.
Beauty makes us more aware of what we could do and be.
We are bound together by beauty  (this is an abigail doan idea)
Images in this post are of a new piece that I personally find beautiful.

I stitched it throughout most of 2017, and the handling of it, the looking at it, the touching it repeatedly, made me very happy.  It put me into my dream world then, and it still does when I run my hands and eyes over it.

The Cloud In Me.  New organic cotton with old and new velvet reverse applique.  Washed and dried seven times.  The dark velvet cloth that fills the random holes was a gift, fifty years old at least and some of it dis-integrated in the laundry and was replaced with younger stuff.  The areas of bleeding from the nine dots of pink silk have left a rosy stain in the centre of the piece.  The scribbled loopy lines that catch and distract my eye and fingers just the right amount are embroidered, yes, but they are also quilting stitches and work just as hard to hold the piece together as does the close hand stitched grid. 

(The Cloud In Me here)

On my walk today I noticed that I still need to chant my steps.

I used to be able to think about other things during this daily walk,
but I am lame since this happened.  I use a cane.  I still have pain.

The left leg moves forward and I count until I get to 100.
Then I stop and stand.  I breathe deeply, and then step to 100 again.
Yesterday I did 400 steps forward, and then came home, 400 more,

Does the huge amount of stitching I do disassociate me from my body?
So that instead of healing me, (as I have claimed) it allows me to ignore my leg
.
I stitch by my window where it is comfortable, legs up, and watch the birds.
I go into my day dream mind.
My repetitive yet very intelligent hand comforts me as it caresses the cloth
I feel at such peace.
yes, I ignore my body for a while.

The birds come to the feeder.
The snow melts.

The repeated touching of hand stitch connects to a dream world of emotions.

We each have an immensity within and quilts help us dream.

Soft Summer Gone

I’m Judy Martin and this is my quilt,
Soft Summer Gone.

It’s large.  One hundred inches square.  8 ½ feet – 2 ½ metres square

It’s simple, quiet and empty, yet at the same time, it is luscious and full of touch and time.

It’s entirely hand stitched.  Even the seams are layered, tucked and sewn by hand.
The quilting is hand embroidery.

Wool yarn is couched into a large gestural drawing, a swoopy windy cross.

The threads are many colours of silk floss in stem stitch. 

The fabrics are silk that I dyed with plants that grow where I live.
I live on an island in Lake Huron, one of North America’s great lakes.
The various yellows are from golden rod collected from fields and ditches.
That bit of blue is indigo.

I use a large oval hoop in my lap to do this – it took two years just to do the quilting.

My aim is to create textiles that connect with our inner world.

Consider the reverie that happens sometimes in nature.
A sudden time shift and we go back into childhood memory or leap forward into future hopes and dreams.
A feeling of well being.

My work employs the sense of touch, more powerful than the sense of sight for connecting to our emotional inner immensity. 

My work is large, simple, quiet, full of touch and time, similar to nature.

All photos of the quilt in this post are by Nick Dubecki, from Sudbury.
The photo of me with my back to the world is by Judith Quinn Garnett, a fellow exhibitor.
The photo of me with my lovely certificate is by my husband Ned, who drove me to the opening
.
Soft Summer Gone received two awards in Surface Design at this year's Quilt National.
see here for complete list of award winners at this year's exhibition.

the tenderness, the beauty

We drove north on the back roads

 I stitched.

Our new baby :three days old above, six days old below

art is not about art.  art is about life.
Louise Bourgeois

quilt in use

Aili Evelyn 30 months

 It's nice to see Aili using the quilt I made her .  She had it in her crib last October when we visited.

 Her room is filled with colour and light, another of my quilts is on a wall.

That one (pictured above) is inspired by an Emily Carr painting, and is covered with blanket stitch embroidery - quilting.

 I was pleased to see that these quilts are such an important part of my grand daughter's life.

We visited Aili again just before Christmas, and found out that she has moved out of her crib into a big girl bed. After all, she's going to be a big sister in January!

I hope that her quilt will help her through this big transition.

delight

detail of front - silk with silk and wool thread, judy martin

most of the back, quilted with hand embroidery, silk with wool batt, judy martin 100 " square

I put my silk quilt through the gentle cycle with cold water and hung it on the line.

make my way without a map

say yes to the experience that comes

trust beyond measure

Luce Irigaray

turning the air to cloth

turning the air to cloth

Watching the birds whirling gracefully across the blue sky with undulating curves, I think how they look like cross stitches.  Then they disappear, fly away.

I was inspired to make something that might hold that ephemeral moment.

In this piece, embroidery is used as a quilting stitch to connect the birds and the air around them into a kind of spirit cloth.

The black birds that move so beautifully in unison over the fields could be seen as a metaphor for those dark yet brief moments that happen in all our lives.

Or perhaps they just show us that it's time to make a change in direction.

Round Lake Mud Bay 1915 oil on wood by Tom Thomson

There is an exhibition opening this weekend at the Perivale Gallery and I am showing this bird quilt.

Images of the full quilt can be seen here.

It is a two sided quilt.

Above Us is the second side of the wall piece turning the air to cloth.  The dark outlines of the birds in flight are filled with white or light coloured threads to signify peace and calmness.  The underneath side of the common embroidery stitches that cover the body of the quilt mark it with an unexpected, subtle drawing.