and this quilt it is so safe

Kindness is our only hope.

We were with our family in a Mexican resort during that unreal time between Christmas and New Year's.  We had a very beautiful escape.  

I took my handwork with me and there were moments of quiet when I turned to it, mostly in the early evenings in our very clean and white room when it was a relief to be away from the sun.

I am pleased to finally be able to share on this blog that I have been invited to mount a solo show at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham England this coming August.  For the exhibition, I plan to finish up the quilt tops I put together during the pandemic so that I can display mostly all new work.  And this is one of them.

Quilting it surprised me.  When I hand piece a quilt, I usually need to strengthen the seams by quilting them 'in the ditch' and that is the case here.  However, this is the first time that I have added a secondary grid and that simple stitching made the old damasks express a softness that I had not expected.  

It became a quiet safety net full of PEACE.

A traditional one patch quilt has a timeless quality, not innovative or risky.  Quilts like this make me think about my 50 year marriage to Ned.  We celebrated it in Mexico with our children and there were many speeches and teasing about our long marriage and one of the kids asked me what my favourite thing about being married to Ned over the years and my answer  was that I felt safe with him.  

I'm a timid person. It's a scary world and I am afraid of it.  

And this quilt.  It is so safe.  

and my love is poured.

Our world goes to pieces. We have to rebuild our world.  We investigate and worry and analyze and forget that the new comes about through exuberance, not through a defined deficiency. We have to find our strength rather than our weakness.  Out of the chaos of collapse we can save the lasting: we still have our right or wrong; the absolute of our inner voice.  We still know beauty.  We still know freedom and happiness, unexplained and unquestioned.  Intuition saves us examination.  We have to gather our constructive energies and concentrate on the little we know, the few remaining constants.  But how?  We neglect a training in experimenting and doing.  We feel safer as spectators.  We collect rather than construct.  We are proud of knowledge but forget that facts only give reflected light.  If we want to learn to do, we have to turn to artwork, more specifically to craft work.  We learn that no picture exists before it is done.  The conception of a work gives only its temper, not its consistency.  Things take shape in material and in the process of working it.  Anni Albers

two trees at fifty years

Ned and I celebrated our 50 years married at a resort in Mexico over New Year's.  Our four children and their families celebrated with us.    

There were eighteen in our party. It was a blast and I am so very thankful.

A note about the t-shirts we are wearing in this beach photo.  Created as a surprise for us, the youngsters marched into our room in a large group and they each wore a t-shirt.  The one year old twins, the school age sisters, the teen boys, the adults in their 30's and 40's.  They had a playlist from their childhood / our marriage.  They brought shirts for us to wear.  

The design is of two trees:  a white pine for Ned, referring to the Georgian Bay family cottage and an Elm tree for me, referring to the Elm tree on my parent's farm near Fort Frances.  Each tree is growing form its own root system, tall and strong, side by side.  

I've written about this 50 year thing before and I promise that this is the last post about it.  Shall we go on into the new year?  Best wishes to your family from mine for 2024.  xoxo  

my ten thousand piece quilt

This is a simple post about the simple quilt that I am hand piecing this week. 

ten thousand piece quilt by Yoshiko Jinzenji, naturally dyed cotton, 72 inches quare

Inspired by Yoshiko Jinzenji's ten thousand piece quilt that she made in the 80's and included in her book, Quilt Artistry: Inspired Quilts from the East.  

I started it during the drive to Kitchener to deliver the Inside Out exhibition .  

Simple because you begin at the center, and then go round and round, increasing the number of patches in each strip as you work towards the edges.

My one patch quilts are usually made from collections of nine patch blocks that I join up.  

This one is different.  Simpler in a way.  

We continued on after Kitchener to a resort in Mexico.   

The fabrics are left over linen scraps from previous projects that I am using up.

Hand piecing squares fills me with positive energy.

As the work in my lap grows under my fingers, I feel stronger and braver.

 

The pink strip I'm adding today is 16 squares long.  It's left over from the sunshine quilt.    

This soft textile is a journal of days.  

It is recording memories of this week in Mexico with our daughter and her boyfriend.  

 Sending out love from us.  xo

like a star in my sky

 What a time we are living through.

At the end of February Ned and I went to Mexico.
I started a new little quilt because I wanted something to do in my swim suit lap.

I wanted to make something small that I could pick up and work on without thinking
but all quilts are acts of mindfulness.

I used red thread and circluar shapes and slowly found that path to my inner self.
It always works.

The weather was often windy or chilly while we were there.
Still beautiful though, to hear the waves.

My little quilt is made of light weight wool and the warmth it gave was perfect.
I couldn't stop working on it.

I continued to stitch in the plane and also in the car as we drove north towards home.

The world is in the middle of a pandemic crises.
My quilt continues to hold me safe.
Doing it helps me.

We're in self isolation now and still I continue and continue.

Continuing to stitch this little quilt.
A red star in my sky, a mothering star. 

 I sit by the window, and the birds watch me stitch.

Here I am.
This is the proof.

cirque du soleil

 every sense was touched

 including the sense of wonder

change

Life is very simple when I am in Mexico.
My days are pared down and I begin to think it might be possible to change my work.
I begin to think "what if I stopped doing what I usually do?"

"Strip everything away to the minimum. 

 When you start over, leave only what is truly needed."

Gertrude Stein

isla mujeres

a photo essay 

 taken from passenger seat of a rented golf cart

 as we zipped around the roads and streets of Isla Mujeres, a small island off the coast of yucatan penninsula, Mexico

 we were there on Mardi Gras day (not planned)

 

 the colour of the walls, doors, and window trim is joyous

 so much vibrant colour gives me the feeling of being loved

 Isla Mujeres translates to Women Island in english 

my work with me

I am on vaycay with my husband. 

We had ten days in Mexico with our Anchorage family.  Now they are back home.
They survived the earthquake and are still experiencing aftershocks, but they are safe.

Then we had another week and Canadian friends arrived.

  I brought my work with me.

I don't do it all the time, but some times.

It holds the heat and wind of this place some how. 
Each stitch wraps time snugly.

This slow time in Mexico
is threaded to my heart and will remain.
Somehow.