breath, care, time

New floor quilt for the twins, scrutinized by Ursa.

Just a quick post here about the sewing I did for the new babies. 

First, I made lots of flannelette pads with cheerful dotty bindings.  

I also put binding on two receiving blankets.

Useful and practical.  Easily cleaned.    

I made some for Oona and Jay's first babies too.  Click here to see 2006 ones, and here to see 2014.

They just fit a new baby.  

Ned and I also cleaned and repaired the bassinet that we used for our babies and took it to Grace.  

We rented a little house six minutes away from the couple  and moved into it just before Christmas.  Our other kids take turns visiting and helping out.

      

I worked on the floor quilt I started in December.      

I was able to finish it!.  

It's hand stitched with sashiko thread.    

Breath, care, and time are all contained in a gift of handmade cloth.  Welcome to our beautiful world, sweet and tiny but also huge miracles. xoxo 

a new body of work

I am pleased to be working on a new body of work for my exhbition in October,

I have eight pieces under way.
This one is an organic cotton landscape quilted into a wool batt.
Backed with an old linen table cloth. it feels cozy yet light.  Dreamy.  Serene.

We have just returned from a few days in the city.
Ned has monthly meetings there this year and I tag along.  We visit our kids.

 

 She's nearly 6 weeks now.

 

I stitched in the car both ways.  Sally Mann's audio book Hold Still kept us company.

Joy is a sublime emotion because it is accompanied by a kind of terror.  A feeling that it can't last.
Zadie Smith said that.    Joy just comes across us, unlike pleasure which is chosen.

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.

ethereal

someone recently used the word ethereal to describe my work

in the bedroom window 

What does ethereal mean?  I had to look it up.

Google definition:
extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world

in living room picture window 

dainty
elegant
graceful
fragile

where I stitch every day 

airy
fine
subtle
unearthly

I finished grand-daughter Aili's quilt top last week.  A hand pieced log cabin shown here.
Aili is an Irish girl's name, also common in Finland and Estonia.
Aili means 'light'.

a safety net

I've been working on Aili's quilt.
I am making it as perfect as I can.
Saying this reminds me that Agnes Martin said something about perfection.

"In our minds, there is awareness of perfection; when we look with our eyes we see it, and how it functions is mysterious to us and unavailable. 
When we live our lives it's something like a race - our minds become concerned and covered over and we get depressed and have to get away for a holiday.
And then sometimes there are moments of perfection and in these moments we wonder why we ever thought life was difficult."   Agnes Martin

She goes on, speaking about seeking out those moments and trying to represent them in art, and that generally those 'moments of perfection'  allude us.
I believe in those moments, but they are not exactly what I wanted to say about this baby's quilt.

I want to say something about her innocence and perfectness - so fresh and young, unspoiled by the world.

And about the responsibility and blessing her little perfect self is for her young parents.
And what I, her grand mom, want to create for her.
A place where for just a few minutes, maybe as long as a nap, things do seem to be perfect.

Restful
Safe
Nurturing
Cozy
Airy
Light
Solid
Lasting
Almost perfect
As perfect as I can manage.

And so I pick it apart.
Re-sewing almost every stitch.

I spent all day yesterday on it.
I will be spending months, a year of my life on it probably, so that she will have it.
She will have me, for the rest of her life.
This near-perfect log cabin will touch her across all that time.

A gift of caring.
An heirloom.

A safety net.

New and old connected

I've been working on a new baby quilt. 

I chose a traditional log cabin in calm colours. 

Six blocks wide, six blocks high, the finished size will be about 36 inches square. (shown in progress)

Each six inch block takes about an hour to hand piece.  I've been stitching it in the car during trips to Toronto.   I've also been sewing this quilt while I visit Dad in Little Current.

Yesterday he asked me what my last name was.  He couldn't remember my sister's married name either.

binding baby cloths

Our family is expecting a new arrival this month.

I have been making baby cloths.  Small pads for changing, burping, the floor.

I'm using cotton flannelette (some of it is organic) and bias binding  that I have made myself.
In the photo above, there are eight or nine in each pile of baby cloth.  Those on the left are unfinished. 

 

Bound edges are a reason to love traditional quilts.

 

These red and dotted edges are for a coming miracle.

gender

We wait for a baby to be born. Our daughter and her husband have elected NOT to know whether it is a boy or a girl. There is nothing pink in the house yet but I think that there might be if the baby is a girl. Today I completed these white sleeping pads for the baby's bassinet as we are in the prenatal 'neutral' space of yellow, green, and especially white.

I find this interesting because in contemporary society the two genders dress very similarly in jeans with hoodies or short jackets. In a way we are like the Greek and Roman men and women who both had to wrap huge amounts of fabric gracefully around their bodies or those upper class northern Europeans of both genders during the Renaissance who suffered through lace neck ruffles. Why then, do the racks in the baby departments line up so severely on the side of boy or girl, blue or pink? Perhaps its because newborn babies all look to be the same gender and those colours are clues. They are identity signifiers. Here's a boy.