Murmuration

murmuration 

This is a post about a new quilt top, murmuration.  I want to write about the process and how it made me feel as I machine pieced pinwheels from silk samples that were given to me by my daughter April and her friend, Em J, who works in film costuming. 

I want to write about how I let this obsession happen and how I loved that it happened.  I was in a rare place of creativity and had to keep sewing and pinning to the wall until finished.  

I used silly rules things like having to sew the four half square triangle blocks of a pinwheel together when I ran out of pins and then eventually having to sew two pinwheels together when I ran out of pins again.

And I want to tell you how I used my body, not my mind, (unless it was my mind that made up the limits and rules). For example I didn't let myself change the size of the gifted strips of cloth.  If they were 5 1/2 inches wide, I left them that size and therefore had to pair them with another strip the same size.  Eventually, when I was forced by to change colour, I would trim the larger piece, and that is why there are smaller triangles.  They are the trimmings from the wider strips.                    

I also added some pieces from my own supply of shot silks, but chose not to have any reds or yellows in order keep to the rather sombre palette in the original fabrics.  

Usually when I work I turn the phone timer to one hour but for the ten days that it took me to do this piecework, I turned it to two hours at a time.  Even then, time went by so quickly.

And yet, physically, I tried to slow everything down.  I used my body and moved a fair amount for each step.  I cut the four squares needed for a pinwheel at my cutting board and then marked them carefully with the diagonal lines for seams and then I would walk around the table to my sewing machine and sew them together and cut them.  Then I had to get up and go to the iron in order to press them flat, and then walk into another room to the pinwall and place them.  Then I sat for a while in my chair and look at it all, eventually getting up to go back to the cutting board to cut out two more sets of squares.  My rules said that they had to be a different pair than the previous time which made it interesting for me.  My point is that I did not try to cut a whole bunch of squares at one time, or do any chain piecing, or iron everything at the same time.  Each block was done one at a time and then looked at.  Regarded. It was like painting with my body and the sewing machine and the iron and those beautiful silks.

I wanted to tell you this thing about moving my body more than I needed to because of the feeling that it was necessary to slow down the machine sewing.  I used the wall as if it was a piece of paper or canvas and worked by intuition in that arbitrary placement.  I was obsessed with getting the whole thing finished though, because of the placement.  It wasn’t as if I could just pile up the blocks and put them in a drawer, I had to finish it in the one go.  At least that's how it felt.  Urgent.

When I finished I put my coat and boots on and took my cane so that I could manage my way down the gentle slope that was deep in drifted snow and pinned the sewn assemblage on the line I have there, down in the cedars.  

It had snowed three or four inches overnight and the east morning light was delightful on the moving lake.  

Now I've chosen a backing cloth from the silk fabric that my instagram friend, Fabia, gifted me earlier this year (two shades of gold), and I will hand stitch this not-square shape.

I love that it is shaped like a cloud and I may make another.  

The thing is, I thought I'd lost this almost erotic passion of losing myself in creativity for such a long period.  I realized that I was in that rare place where reality was outside of me. I was in a dream world and I knew it.  I was in another place.  I was aware of this and I loved it.

It's hard to write this so it makes sense, but maybe you understand.  

I think you do.  

What are you working on now?

I'm taking turns stitching into two pieces.
Connected by their design, both are large nine-patches.

One is stitched with black thread, the other with white thread.

expectations/memories/dreams

 

Circles within squares are design elements they have in common.

The cloth was found in my life collection of small pieces of fancy cloth.
(taffeta, linen damask, wool suiting, and silks of all sorts)

I stitched or painted on all the squares earlier. 

At first I thought that maybe they didn't need hand stitch
I was hoping to love their simplicity more.

But now,  the chika-chika marks of running stitch/ kantha stitch
has risen the level of intimacy in these two wall pieces
and has given them power.

(...and they fit into my suitcase.  Hola from Mexico xo)

soft

 I wanted my quilt, Soft Summer Gone, to have a kind of timelessness, as if it has always been.

 I made it large and simple and open with emptiness.

 

 I coloured it with yellow golden-rod wildflowers gathered at the end of summer from the fields and ditches.

  I stitched it with large gestures that reached and crossed and with small circles that rose up.

 I wanted my viewer to yearn to touch the stitches and the soft cloth.

I hoped to cause a poetic experience deep within.

Quilt National sent our work back to us last week.
I unfolded her softly.  

Itchiku Kubuta : Symphony of Light

chou / the first blush of winter (detail) by Itchiku Kubuta 

I went to see the Itchiku Kubota exhibition at the textile museum last weekend, not prepared for the awe I was to experience.

Symphony of Light: Seasons by Itchiku Kubuta
Ryou/Certitude 1986,  Kuo / Change 1986 and Hin / Nostalgia 1987
tie-dyeing, ink painting, embroidery on silk crepe

Itchiku Kubuta (1917 - 2003) apprenticed with a dyer who specialised in hand painting and resist dyeing when he was 14 years old and established his own studio 5 years later (age 19).  The following year, while visiting a museum, he saw a fragment of Tsujigahana dyed kimono silk from the Maromachi period (16th century) that inspired him for the rest of his life.

Symphony of Light: Seasons
Hou / Late autumn melencholy 1987,  Kou / Twixt autumn and winter 1989, Ei / Unexpected Snow 1989
 and Sei / blue Trace of hope in sudden snow  1989,
tie dyeing, ink painting, embroidery on silk crepe

"it carried a quality that was plaintive and mysterious.  I continued to look at that small piece of fabric, as if placed under a spell, for over three hours"  Itchiku Kubata

He devoted himself to reviving this ancient dyeing method, and eventually succeeded in 1981.   

Symphony of Light by itchiku Kubuta
Chou / The  First Blush of Winter 1986 and Kan / Never Ending Snowfall
tie-dyeing, ink painting, embroidery on silk crepe

He wanted to create panoramic visions of the subtle but swift passage of time and nature through the seasons and decided to create 80 kimonos that would connect to each other, sleeve to sleeve as a continuous canvas.

He was 63 years old when he began.

Itchiku Kubuta completed twenty-nine kimono for autumn and winter and five for the universe before he died at 86.  An additional two for the universe were created by his assistants posthumously.

Symphony of Light: The Universe  by Itchiku Kubuta 

It's his vision that I find awesome and humbling.
He started his larger than life project with no hesitation about his own mortality....as if he truly felt that he had all the time in the world. 

His canvas references the human form in the kimono shapes, connecting to each other, arm to arm.

Each is made one at a time over a lengthy period of time....going through multiple laborious steps.

It is grand.  They are sublime.

There is a museum in Japan devoted to this man.

The website shows the Symphony of Light kimonos in a continuous line.  click here.

Ohn
Mount Fuji Against Golden Layers of Clouds  2000 by Itchiku Kubuta
tie-dyeing, ink painting, embroidery on silk crepe

Kubota also created individual kimono.
Three of his Mount Fuji kimonos were on display.

detail of Ohn by Itchiku Kubuta

Frank Stella said:

"I don't like to say I have given my life to art.

 I prefer to say that art has given me my life"

Soft Summer Gone

I’m Judy Martin and this is my quilt,
Soft Summer Gone.

It’s large.  One hundred inches square.  8 ½ feet – 2 ½ metres square

It’s simple, quiet and empty, yet at the same time, it is luscious and full of touch and time.

It’s entirely hand stitched.  Even the seams are layered, tucked and sewn by hand.
The quilting is hand embroidery.

Wool yarn is couched into a large gestural drawing, a swoopy windy cross.

The threads are many colours of silk floss in stem stitch. 

The fabrics are silk that I dyed with plants that grow where I live.
I live on an island in Lake Huron, one of North America’s great lakes.
The various yellows are from golden rod collected from fields and ditches.
That bit of blue is indigo.

I use a large oval hoop in my lap to do this – it took two years just to do the quilting.

My aim is to create textiles that connect with our inner world.

Consider the reverie that happens sometimes in nature.
A sudden time shift and we go back into childhood memory or leap forward into future hopes and dreams.
A feeling of well being.

My work employs the sense of touch, more powerful than the sense of sight for connecting to our emotional inner immensity. 

My work is large, simple, quiet, full of touch and time, similar to nature.

All photos of the quilt in this post are by Nick Dubecki, from Sudbury.
The photo of me with my back to the world is by Judith Quinn Garnett, a fellow exhibitor.
The photo of me with my lovely certificate is by my husband Ned, who drove me to the opening
.
Soft Summer Gone received two awards in Surface Design at this year's Quilt National.
see here for complete list of award winners at this year's exhibition.

onion skins and old nails

I've been saving onion skins for quite some time, and last week I used them to dye some cloth.

I am writing about my process.
These are experiments. I do not claim that I know what I am doing.
Sometimes my experiments work.
I am inspired by the idea that natural dyers throughout time have experimented.

My process:
Put a large grocery bag full of onion skins into a big canning pot.
Pour boiling water over them until they are covered.
Allow this to steep and cool down over night.
The next day, bring the onion skin solution to a simmer and keep it there for 90 minutes.
Allow this to steep and cool down over night.  Repeat if possible.
Remove the skins from the liquid.

Divide the liquid into two pots.
In second pot of dye, add a jar full of iron solution.

The iron solution is Jenny Dean's recipe.
Into a wide glass jar with a lid place scrap iron (old nails, a small trivet, scrap metal)
Cover with solution made from two parts water and one part clear vinegar
Leave for at least two weeks.  (I left mine for more than one year)

Protein Fibres work best with natural dyes  (from animals (wool and silk)

Add wool and silk cloth as well as silk rayon velvet (see top photo)
No pre-soak or pre-mordant needed for these, the cloth was added dry

Gently bring cloth and dye up to a simmer for 90 minutes
Allow to do the steep and cool over night thing, two times preferably
Our house smelled like onion soup for a week and a half.

Hang fabrics outside without rinsing.
Just wring them and allow them to dry naturally
Fold gently and allow to rest for a few days

The colours of the protein fibres (wool and silk) are really rich
A nearly red rusty colour on the wool and velvet from the onion skins (above photo)
A deep olive greenish grey from the pot with the iron (see below)

Cellulose fibres

To make linen and cotton ready to accept the natural dyes, I did a pre-soak over night in two litres of 2 percent milk from the grocery store.  It was an experiment.

Soak cotton and linen cloth overnight in milk
Wring out the milk and place the wet cloth into the dye baths
Bring to a simmer for 90 minutes.  Steep over night.
Hung on the line without rinsing but after wringing/  (above photo cotton and linen with iron-onion

The fabrics had markings on them when they were dried that I didn't expect.
The dye bath itself was quite milky.

There was still enough milky dye left in the pot so I did a third round with the protein fibres.
Although the colours were much paler,  they were still really beautiful.  (see below)
I am truly pleased with this experiment.
It took place while we carried on with our so called normal life.

I washed all the cloth in the washing on delicate cycle, cold water, tea tree detergent.
Two loads in order to separate the iron fabrics from the pure onion
Dry in the dryer for added softness for the velvet.
The stains and natural markings on the cotton and linen remain.

What I do with cloth and dye matches who I am right now.
Just me.
This is how I study and how I learn.
This is what I know already.
I come to my practice with with curiosity and passion.
I am not trying to change anything.
I just want to learn more about the same things.