one patch quilts

My hands ache from stitching.

My feet ache from ageing.

My heart aches from continuing on, 

through all the sadness and uncertainty.

I make textiles using just one patch.

(the technique is explained here)

I select one square of cloth and sew it to another one. 

Once I have a field of one patches, I make them stronger by quilting the seams.

The squares are all the same.

The squares are each unique.

Some are organized into rows.

Others appear random, but don't believe it.

They are also organized.

I feel powerless, unable to start the new textile pieces that flood into my brain.

I feel that if I can just finish these two simple cover ups, I can move forward.

I am calling this one Sunshine and more Sunshine

I wonder what is the urgency?

These quilts are not going to fix the war.

I am calling this one Lamentation

They do not protect against the illness.

They do not save beloved children who die.

But they are not a waste of time.

Rather, they are evidence of a time.

A time that we are living through.  

A time that we are grieving through.

All of us.   

Each unique.

Lamentation:  an expression of sorrow, mourning, or regret

My Light Green Heart

more information about this new work are here.

I miss civilization and I want it back.

Marilynne Robinson

my light green heart

I stitch my soft green damask with green threads and it gets heavier and softer.

I worked on it during the family week between Christmas and New Year's,
I kept going even though it seemed every evening that I should let it drop into the pile of abandons.

I added red thread.

I stitched it while surrounded by family.

It's green like a leaf.
It comforted me like a tree, hiding my nervousness
containing my creativity
It allowed me to be present for them because it was only my hands doing busy work
I was not engaging my mind.

Or limping body.

The tucks I am adding make it shorter.

In the mornings I continued, the boys and their dad downloaded the newest star wars game,
my daughters slept.

The greenness is why I started it.
That and the old-ness of the cloth.
The softness.

April called it a worry cloth.

I often stitch while visiting with my family.

Somethimes I go too far and the cloths need to have sections erased or removed

Moon cloth is an example of a worry cloth,
Also silver water and Canadian Pioneer.

On New Year's eve I couched a red line and drew a circle and decided to add more tucks.

This piece is about adding.

Adding and erasing.
These tucks hide some of the dots I made.
Tucking under, covering up.

my light green heart

I stitched all day yesterday.
I thought  yesterday was my last day with this piece.

We drove the girls to Sudbury and I stitched all the way there and all the way back
and then again before and after dinner,
and then some more in front of two episodes of homeland
and for two more hours after Ned went to bed.

It's late afternoon as I write this, snowing really hard and here I am, continuing to stitch tucks into the green heart.

Tucks;
the texutre of them, standing proud.
hiding things within  their creases
iniviting me to touch and manipulate.

I look at the boston fern that I've kept alive - thriving - for three years.
I stare at the repetitive small shapes that line up along the leaves

and the greenness of it makes me happy this January day.

Thanks Dad

My father has always been on the cutting edge of technology. We had the first TV in our small community when I was a child. He had a radio set in his car so we could give him messages while he was on the road while I was growing up. He's always provided me with cameras from the age of 16...and computers and scanners after that. His latest gift was an LCD projector so that I would be able to create digital image lectures at home and then show them without the stress of using unfamiliar equipment. I used this projector on Friday here in Kingston, and want to say thanks, Dad.

Pictured here at age 29 with my older brother. photographer unknown.

My heart, like a hand and its fingers

How she submitted
Loved
Loved her interior world
Her interior wilderness
That primal forest inside her where among decayed tree trunks
Her heart stood
Light green

by Rainer Maria Rilke
paraphrased by moi to allow for the female pronoun, rather than the male