making quilts

 Crown of Thorns 1972.  first quilt by Judy Martin
 re-purposed clothing and curtain fabric, hand pieced and hand quilted, 
(no longer exists)

I made my first quilt when I was twenty, and my second one when I was 24.  I've never gone to therapy like my children do.  I've made quilts instead.

self portrait, 1985
hand painted cotton, re-purposed maternity clothing, hand quilted 42 x 42 inches 

When I started having babies,  quilt making fit into my day better than any other art form.

Judy (31 years) with her two older children in 1982 

I live in Northern Ontario.  I've lived here all my life.  

The quilts I made during my 30’s and 40’s are shocking in their lack of skill.  I gave the baby quilts (learning samples) away to new parents who accepted them graciously.  

spider web baby quilt, 1983
polyester-cotton blends, machine pieced, hand quilted
this photo from 1999 when the baby was 16.  She was using it as a car blanket.

What's going on with them?  I look at the photos in this post and I could say so much about each one, but it would only be interesting for me.

They are soft objects that came together from materials I could touch, were real.

They also came from some kind of fantasy of what I hoped and dreamed and could not name.   

Skipping, 1988   fabric paint, cotton fabrics, machine pieced, hand quilted 

Quilts are slow to make.

There are a lot of repetitive tasks involved that put a person into a meditative state. 

And as I was making them, not only did I feel comforted, I also felt that here was the place I could say things that were not "normal".

About the photos in this blog post.  I spent all day yesterday writing and deleting text, but the images here have been stable.  I wanted to write about how I learned to quilt with no mentor.  

I studied fine art and received a fine art degree from Lakehead University while the kids were still little, but quilts were not part of the curriculum.    Quilts are not part of the fine art world.

Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow, 1995
hand painted clotton, overdyed cotton, machine pieced, hand quilted,
grocery list embroidered on reverse side

And the quilting world was very rigid at the time.  There were quilt police with rules and points and 12 stitches per inch.   My quilts were accepted into juried shows but they rarely won awards.  They were not understood in the quilt world. 

The quilts I made when I was actively mothering were related to my daily life as a mother and also to the fantasy I had about what quilts could be.  Even when they were finished, I maintained that fantasy and loved my own work.  I believe that making them saved my life.

We moved from Kenora to Manitoulin when the kids were 6, 8, 13, and 15 years old.  They went to school and I taught classical piano in a church basement.  

protection blanket  2005.  Chemical dyes on rayon embellished with sequins and ribbon,
machine pieced, hand quilted

In 2005, we had an empty nest.   I began this blog in 2006. 

I kept making my quilts.  I didn't know what I was doing in so many words, but I kept doing it.  

When I gathered up the few here I looked at them more critically.  They don't speak for me the way they used to but they remain evidence that I was here.     

prayer cloth: hope  2024    natural dyes on cotton, hand pieced, hand quilted with red thread 

This is a much edited post.  Thank you for continuing to read it.  

Psychic:  derived from the unconscious rather than the conscious.

Therapy:  care and attention

Making quilts:  still saving my life.

Remembrance

Floating World by Linda Finn   acrylic on canvas 24 x 30 inches

This post is dedicated to the memory of Northern Ontario artist, Linda Finn.   (1945 - 2025)    obituary here

It's also about some other late artists from northern Ontario Canada, a place I have lived for over 30 years.   I feel that each of them worked very hard to support art and artists in our beautiful, spread-out community.  I’m writing this post to  sing out their names with respect.  

Linda Finn's paintings, prints and assemblages were a constant at the Perivale gallery  here on Manitoulin. I sought out her innovative work whenever I visited the gallery.  

The War Letters Project in the Art Gallery of Sudbury  
'April 1917' is on the back wall.  Screen print on bible pages, acrylic on paper , photo etching and lithographs on paper, assembled in 2007 by Linda Finn

In 2017, Linda Finn had a solo show at the  Art Gallery of Sudbury and displayed The War Letters Project. an ongoing body of work that she had begun in 2007.  The project included a wide variety of art pieces; assemblages, paintings, prints and book-works and toured to eleven Ontario galleries over a period of years.  

detail of Linda Finn's assemblage of bible pages printed with repeated images of a soldier 

Each piece in the project started from letters that Linda's grandmother Essie received from soldiers over the two world wars.  The artworks are all shown with better photos on Linda's website (here).  While there, you might be interested in the 20 minute video (The Old Tin Box) that tells the story of this project.  

Essie's letter, monoprint with chine colle on paper, 2008 (detail) by Linda Finn

Now, I want to take a moment to mention three other artists who I personally mourn.  Each of them reached out to me and made me feel part of the art community of northern Ontario when our family moved to Manitoulin from Kenora in 1993.  I looked to them as mentors, although they were only a few years older than me.  They developed their careers before the internet which means that online images of their work are rare.  I’ve provided each artist with two links however, and more information and some images can be found if you click. 

 I apologize if this post seems too personal or dark.  Death is not talked about much.  But you know, I feel that I’m not actually saying enough about these friends of mine when I consider all that they have done for Canadian art.  I’m just naming them.  

Ann Suzuki   (died 2021)   her obituary here

ear hear earth heart by Ann Beam, acrylic on paper, 24 x 30 inches

Ann Beam     (died 2024)   her website here     

Ray Laporte   (died 2022)   his obituary here

My friends.  Remembered here.   I miss them and continue to be inspired by each of them.  

Now, in the spirit of memory and joy,  may I show you the prayer cloth that I finished last night?  

Perhaps it is more of a play cloth.  The transferred painting was done by my middle daughter, Grace, when she was five years old.  She painted the mermaid and the merman on paper which I then transferred with a hot iron to polyester fabric. I was teaching this kind of art in the schools at the time and we used the technique at home for birthday party t-shirt-making and the like.  The heart at the bottom was painted just once, then ironed three times onto the cloth, each time getting a little fainter.  I will be seeing Grace this weekend and will give her the quilt.  I think that the twins can use it for their dolls.  

Mermaid Quilt by Judy Martin,
heat transfer on polyester, dyed velvet, hand stitched, 28 x 33.5 inches  2025,
original painting by Grace Martin when she was five years old

the front and then the back

Counting my blessings 2000  velveteen and cotton quilt 85 x 80 inches

Counting My Blessings (verso)  2000  embroidered cotton, hand quilted 85 x 80 inches

Today Yesterday Tomorrow  1994  painted and pieced cotton hand dyed quilt,
hand embroidery, hand quilted  76 x 72 inches

Today Yesterday Tomorrow (verso) 1994  cotton and embroidered grocery list,
hand quilted 76 x 72 inches

Something More Magical Than It Ever Was 1991 family clothing and silk, log cabin quilt
with photo transfers and painted cloth, 90 x 90 inches

Something More Magical Than It Ever Was (verso)  1991  transfer printed satin and cotton
with hand embroidery 90 x 90 inches 

My Children 1987 painted hand pieced silk from my mother's blouses,
rick rack and polyester border, hand quilted  crib quilt size

My Children (verso)  1987 hand pieced silk and polyester from my mother's blouses, 
 hand quilted , crib quilt size

The quilts in this post are  from my early days of quilting.  They are for the new archive page on my website, (judithemartin.com) which will go live there next month.  

Thank you to the family members and collectors who loaned pieces back to me so that they could be photographed digitally.  Thank you Nick for taking the photos.  Thank you Zoe, for helping me get them onto the website.

I made quilts to save and nurture my creative self.  I started in my early 20’s. I will continue to make them and I am thankful. 

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  

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.  💕💕

road trip back

The photos tell a story

of the beautiful northern Ontario drive

we made last week

to north western Ontario

via the north shore of Lake Superior

with all the rock cuts.

I don't have many photos of the actual destination.  

I didn't think to take photos of the empty fields

behind Burris and Devlin and LaVallee.

We went over to Morson

from Rainy River, past Blackhawk.

Exotic names for the tiny places where people live.  

I didn't think to photograph them. 

Those towns that we drove through or stopped at for soup on the way there and 

also when we were up  there in my home corner of North Western Ontario. 

The Fort Frances area, I tell people.

Besides places named poetically; Terrace Bay, Ignace, Schreiber, Upsala, Emo,

Grassy Narrows, Sleeman, Finland, Nestor Falls, Barwick

there were so many fields and forests that have no name.

That we drove by.  And I did not photograph.

Also, I didn't take enough photos of my children.

They flew to Winnipeg and rented a car to join us.

I do have photos of my brother and I standing in front of 

the trees that my mother planted.

Now giants.

I didn't photograph Ned fixing the gravesite

so that it was perfect.

How can I tell a true story

when most of the photos I have are of long views across big water and cliffs that have 

no relation to the rural pocket of Canada along the rainy river where I grew up.

We drove three full days to get there.

We were there three days.

We drove three more days to get home again.

I worked on Indigo checkerboard during the long drives.  

I stitch in the ditches and also 1/4 inch inside

vast areas of white muslin.

When my father was 22 he was hired to be the secretary of the local school board.  Three applicants interviewed for the one room school in Miscampbell and Pauline Paget age 17 was hired.  In September 1945 they had their first date, a play held at the Burris school.  Theatre continued to be important for them throughout their long marriage.

 

mended butterfly

We had a family gathering here over the Christmas time. 

We were careful.

Everyone was double or triple vaccinated if they were old enough

and most took rapid tests before arriving.

"Negative!" said the 12 year old instead of a greeting.

We did our best.  We stayed within our bubble.

We are OK

Nothing bad happened.

In fact, it was a glorious time. 

Now, they've left.

And I've found another quilt to mend.

 

I made this one 33 years ago.

The fabrics have faded.  Some have disintegrated.

I'm replacing the worn pieces with new cloth, cut to exact size of patch.

Slowly.  One by one.

A refreshed batt was required, so I basted a layer onto the back of the quilt

and laid a new cotton backing over that.

I've got this.

I'm doing my best. 

Look at that triangle.  Don't you think that the shape resembles a heart?

Hearts are life.  These ones are floating.

I'm floating.  

I feel optimistic.  

It's a heavy time to be alive, but fixing something with heart-triangles

is a hopeful act.   

Here's to you, next generation.  Your brave faces forward.  

Your open hearts. xo