mystical landscape

go on
move forward

consent
receive

give myself to the open

 make my way without a map

 trust beyond measure

if something is to come, something sublime
it is through risk

leading no one knows where

because there are still flowers
there is the rose

the rose forever opening for the first and the last time

images of sky with many moons, wool, indigo, hand stitch, completed today,
text by Luce Irigaray
the title of the post is because I started reading Mystical Landscapes am filled with emotion by the words and images.        

how to love

I am writing this from Georgian Bay Canada.
Where the rocks are ancient spirals.

And folds.
And they have been here forever
and they shall continue.

And I've been working on the same pieces for months
And I shall continue.

And April and Jordan arrived on my birthday all the way from Chicago, and then they made a cake.

And we went for a sunset boat ride to celebrate.
And the sun continued its journey
And it too shall continue tomorrow
and the next tomorrow too

 

And then the next day April began to work with  a remarkable quilt top
Rescued from a flea market in Wisconsin

And finally,
the centerpiece that Jordan crafted for the birthday dinner
using wildflowers that have grown here forever
and they too shall continue

All these things fill me with gratitude
and tenderness
and wonder
and love.

wabi sabi wedding

This post is about some of April and Andrew's wedding decor

The couple made gifts for their guests - ceramic salt and pepper bowls by the bride, a wooden tray to hold them by the groom

April used cyanotype to print ferns and wild-flower silhouettes on the boxes that held those gifts.

The bride also made thirty of these dotted pots to hold lavender plants.  The pots were carried by (and gifted to) her friends and the lavender has since been planted in our rock garden at the cottage.

Live plants were used for the centrepieces - above maiden hair fern, below, juniper.

Each plant was carefully planted and arranged with moss or rocks in glass bowls, the whole grounded with a flat porcelain plate made by the bride

April made other blue and white plates for the wedding. The ones in the above photo were used to hold the seating name-tags (little gift boxes full of candy made for the couple by the groom's co-workers, seen at the back of the table).

A denim aesthetic.

She made blue and white birds as gifts for children who attended.

Judith e Martin

I'm often asked if my professional name is Judith or Judy.  My website is Judith Martin Textile Artist.  People often call me Judith.  (They also call me Jude, Judy, Mom, Sweetie.)  My mother named me Judith, but she called me Jude.  My dad calls me Judy.

 

This weekend I decided (again) to be Judith e Martin professionally and Judy or Jude to my friends.  (Margaret Atwood's friends call her Peggy)

If you google Judy Martin the prolific author of books on traditional quilting comes up first and I worry that that some people still confuse me with her.  I am not her.  I am the Canadian Judy Martin who makes quilts. (Google also brings up Judy Martin the wrestler but I am not worried about confusion there)

The Storm at Sea quilt in this post was a wedding gift for Tom (Ned's brother) and Marg in 1988.  (Number 82 on the one hundred quilts blog.)  It's ironic I suppose that page 41 of Scrap Quilts by Judy Martin was my resource.  I have the quilt because April borrowed it for wedding decor.

blue and white

 the marks are evidence of my time

 they describe something recognizable

April's getting married in one month.   I am making blue and white cloths to celebrate.

The trees have flushed this week.  Time is moving so quickly.

"It's our movement that tells us we're alive."  David Hockney

october skies

"Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity."  Marshall McLuhan

Empty Room Meditation

I am in an empty room.
All the walls are windows except the one at my back.

I am in an empty room, in my stitching chair.
It is quiet.

The windows are just screens. The breeze is gentle, the air sweet.
I close my eyes, still my hands.

I rest.
It's quiet.
There is no thing in my head.

In 1992, I took a journal writing workshop with Christina Baldwin .  I've been going through some of the exercises this week and re-doing them.  The exercises are still relevant and push me in an emotional way.  Totally different emotions than those of twenty years ago, yet I am still me.

"Imagine the space between your eyes and ears as an empty room.  Take out everything except for one thing.  This is the message.  Thank the message."

Questions like these are in her books about journal writing.
Why is it a secret?
What would make it safe to tell?
Who else is this secret affecting in your present life?
There is usually a reason that things happen to us.  What was the gift or the reason that resulted from this event?
Have you forgiven yourself?

stitch meditation

Those I care about are going through major life changes.

This is a new piece.

how to see?

 We can't improve on nature.

 These August days have given me time to stitch and read. Swim.
 I am not thinking.  I have 'no mind'.

But there is room inside me for this huge August sky.
It IS amazing, isn't it?

This is the first summer that Ned and I have lived at his family cottage nearly full time and although he might not agree, I think that we have both slowed into a dream like rhythm.  I do nothing, yet I work all the time.  Thoughts and ideas rise up.