dream, earth, luck, moon, soul

dream

Beginning again.  

Beginning in the middle.

Here is my sewing.

earth

Art is about relationships.

earth (other side)

Art may seem as if it is about nature or beauty, but it is about love.

luck

The more I study art, the more I realize this.    

luck (other side)

Because love is caring.  

moon

Some call it wonder.

patience

 Some use the term 'unselfing'.     (here is a link)

patience (other side) 

In order to do my own unselfing I take risks with materials.

And then I make things from what has become wrecked.     

rose

It helps me make sense of being alive.  

rose (other side) 

I have so many things to say right now, that I am not able to say anything.  

That's why I am beginning in the middle.  Here is some sewing.

Here are some of the small wool and velvet bundles I made during July.     

soul

I've been to Great Britain. Lots to say about that.  some of it here.

I'm going to Nova Scotia.  The reason is an exhibition, mentioned here.

Women sew as a substitute for words. 

Love Spreads

Another post about doing my work while grandmothering the new twins.

I only had one piece with me for nearly three weeks and it's gone through several nick names.

For a while I called it Holy Rothko, because of the dark reddish field of colour floating between the warm grey linen borders and because of the holes that marked it in a grid.

Then as I continued working on it, I called it Holy Holy, because it had taken on a spiritual quality.

For a while it was as if this piece helped me confront my own mortality.  

Grace with Juni

.

Judy with Daisy

I'm working it from the back side, stitching with running stitch around and around the backsides of the reverse applique dots, and then cutting away the sheer fabric that covers them.

So that the velvet circles bloom.   

While in the rented house, I'm taking care of Grace's cat for a while as her household gets used to the twins.    In the above photo, you can spy the quilt I mended last year on the bed.  Ned didn't come this time, but our other two daughters took turns helping their sister.

Mostly I've been cooking for the new parents.  I've been using recipes from the pandemic cookbook I compiled in 2020 of family favourites.  

I've been able to get in an hour of stitching by the window in our rented house each morning.

The piece is still not finished, but getting closer.

Love Spreads pinned to studio wall, nearly finished.

Newest title?  Love Spreads 

Inspired by a quote Maria Popova  sent me in her newsletter:  

Love is essentially self-communicative:  those that do not have it catch it from those who have it.  True love is unconquerable and irresistible; and it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches.  Meher Baba   

It's Christmas Eve

Happy Holidays! 

In this post I am showing you the December calendar piece I made with cut up family photos and Christmas cards stitched to wool fabrics and trimmed with pine cones and satin.   The photos are from 1988, when I had doubles printed of all the snapshots I took that year and made twelve small seasonal hangings with them.  Looking at this piece now,  along with nostalgia,  I see the open hearted courageous spirit that kept me going when my children were so young and so was I.  The pine cones are a bit mashed now, and I am old but we go on.

To you and to those you love,  I send warm greetings and good wishes and love.  💕💕

Q How did you develop your skills?

Actually, I am not concerned about skill.

I am an amateur, (from the Latin verb amare: to love).  I do this work because I love it so much.

If I thought about whether I was doing things correctly, I wouldn't get nearly as much done.

My motto is ‘Plunge in and go Slow”.

I believe that if you have an idea, it’s important to begin while you are inspired.

With patience and self-study, I learned how to do the French knot.
I learned how to do mitered corners.  I learned how to ensure my triangles had crisp points.

These technical things were conquered when I needed to.

In this post, photos of my newest nine-patch...in progress.

9-patch is a pattern that I find satisfying to make and be comforted by.

intimate cloth

 I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you in my heart.

For a while now, I've been wanting to embroider love poems onto old wool blankets.
Love poems that also reference dreaming, or stars, or the sky.
This week, I started.

In the mornings, first thing, I go on my stationary bike.
The bike is in my studio, and gives me an opportunity to look at my pin wall.
I can prop a book on the bike too and these days I am reading about Joyce Wieland.
Joyce is one of my heroines and influences.
She made no division between paintings, quilts and films and firmly believed that the domestic and the intimate deserved a place in art.

I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you in my heart.
I have come to bring out the beauty you never knew you had and lift you like a prayer to the sky.
Rumi

you will be softer

when you meet that person
a person
one of your soulmates

let the connection
relationship
be what it is

it may be five minutes
five hours
five days
five months

five years
a life time
five lifetimes

let it manifest itself in the way it is meant to
it has an organic destiny

that way if it stays or if it leaves

you will be softer

from having been loved this authentically

souls come into
return
open
and sweep through your life for a myriad of reasons

let them be who
and what
they are meant

the text in this post is a poem by nayyirah waheed

I started this unfinished quilt a lifetime ago,
it's very soft. 

about love

only the earth lives forever, 2008 by Judy Martin
 favourite shirt on gessoed paper with hand stitch and painted cloth border

full of emotions

crying easily

needing a generous kind of love

the reverse side of newest stitching by Judy Martin
wool thread on linen   work in progress

having an inner world

seeking passion, intelligence

finding magic

feel better bundles by Judy Martin 2015
hemlock twigs wrapped with cloth and thread over a period of years.  (three times so far) 

"I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel, 

that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people"  

Vincent Van Gogh