My exhibition was a success

detail of Stardust  full view on website

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

 As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.

Yin Yin (detail) full view on New Work blog

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.

love the soul inside of me (detail)   

The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.  

Carl Jung

inner world (detail)  full view on website 

The above text is in the journal I have with me in Great Britain.      

The images in this post are details of some of my pieces from Softer and Dreamier, my exhibition this year at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham.  There is an excellent video of the exhibition in the sidebar of this blog and I'll put a link to it here as well.   

I also wrote about my exhibition on My Updates blog - click here to read.  xo 

Not from the Real World

Yesterday,  I woke up and spread my Dresden plate quilt on the table.

Then I made a schedule for the five days I have before the Birmingham festival of quilts show is picked up from my house on Manitoulin  Island, Canada for delivery to England.

Saturday June 22:   Mend these Dresden Plate appliques with velvet. 

Sunday 23 - Wash and block this large quilt.  Finish making all display sleeves.  

Monday 24 - Make a list of the fourteen pieces.  Include measurements, insurance values and updated titles and send it to the organizers.  Finish all remaining sewing.  Begin folding quilts with tissue paper and plastic bags.  Start packing the boxes.  

Tuesday June 25 - Finish boxing up the exhibition with care.  Label everything. 

Wednesday June 26-  The boxes will be picked up between 10 am and 5 pm.

At the moment, the exhibition is stacked on chairs around the house.    

I've worked so hard for this solo show.  I've worked 10 hours a day for over a year.  

I've been able to do it by working on three different pieces each day for one week, and then switching to three new ones the following week.  I've had to abandon a few that I just couldn't finish.

Most of the pieces are large scale. Most are very simple, and have grids of dots or circles.

They are abstract, folk-like.  They are not representational.

Not from the real world.  Not from the news.

The quilts in this exhibition seem to be a throw back to a simpler time.   

The quilts in this exhibition speak the traditional language of quilts.  

They use traditional patterns.  They use fabrics that come to hand such as sewing scraps, repurposed domestic fabrics, and pieces of clothing.

The fabrics in the Dresden Plate quilt have faded.  Some of them are worn out and need replacing.  Why?  They are all at least fifty years old.  The fabrics in the applique's are from my high school and early marriage sewing projects.  I unpicked the circles from the worn white cotton that was the original background of a quilt I made as a bride, and placed them onto new squares of silk, linen, or lightweight wool cloth.  

I remember that sensuous time in my youthful life every time I touch one of those fabrics.

Now, touching the velvet replacement patches will send me off into a different kind of dream world.  

I look forward to sleeping with this quilt once the show is done.  The new title of the Dresden Plate quilt is You are a Single Star.

C.G. Jung called the circle and square combination a metaphor for the inner life.

All the Time in the World

you are a single star - finishing the quilting 
a week ago

When I run after what I think I want

                            you are a single star - sewing on the binding - in the car on way to cottage                                         Thursday June 6

My days are a furnace

love the soul inside of me  - making a sleeve
Friday June 7 

of stress and anxiety. 

the good and the true - making a display sleeve for it
Saturday June 8

If I sit in my own place of patience, 

Ned's 75th

what I need flows to me, 

April with some of her work at the cottage
Monday June 10

and without pain.  

Ben holding up my Cloudy Day piece 
Monday June 10

From this I understand that

home on Manitoulin with my garden
Tuesday June 11

what I want also wants me, 

The promotion for the interview begins
Wednesday June 12

is looking for me and attracting me.  

making a sleeve for your fragile life
Thursday June 13

There is a great secret here

love meditation: intimacy and new sleeve
Thursday June 13

For anyone who can grasp it.          Rumi

Friday June 14

Click HERE to view the hour long interview on YouTube.  Thank you Fibre Arts Take Two!  
 

and this quilt it is so safe

Kindness is our only hope.

We were with our family in a Mexican resort during that unreal time between Christmas and New Year's.  We had a very beautiful escape.  

I took my handwork with me and there were moments of quiet when I turned to it, mostly in the early evenings in our very clean and white room when it was a relief to be away from the sun.

I am pleased to finally be able to share on this blog that I have been invited to mount a solo show at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham England this coming August.  For the exhibition, I plan to finish up the quilt tops I put together during the pandemic so that I can display mostly all new work.  And this is one of them.

Quilting it surprised me.  When I hand piece a quilt, I usually need to strengthen the seams by quilting them 'in the ditch' and that is the case here.  However, this is the first time that I have added a secondary grid and that simple stitching made the old damasks express a softness that I had not expected.  

It became a quiet safety net full of PEACE.

A traditional one patch quilt has a timeless quality, not innovative or risky.  Quilts like this make me think about my 50 year marriage to Ned.  We celebrated it in Mexico with our children and there were many speeches and teasing about our long marriage and one of the kids asked me what my favourite thing about being married to Ned over the years and my answer  was that I felt safe with him.  

I'm a timid person. It's a scary world and I am afraid of it.  

And this quilt.  It is so safe.  

and my love is poured.

Our world goes to pieces. We have to rebuild our world.  We investigate and worry and analyze and forget that the new comes about through exuberance, not through a defined deficiency. We have to find our strength rather than our weakness.  Out of the chaos of collapse we can save the lasting: we still have our right or wrong; the absolute of our inner voice.  We still know beauty.  We still know freedom and happiness, unexplained and unquestioned.  Intuition saves us examination.  We have to gather our constructive energies and concentrate on the little we know, the few remaining constants.  But how?  We neglect a training in experimenting and doing.  We feel safer as spectators.  We collect rather than construct.  We are proud of knowledge but forget that facts only give reflected light.  If we want to learn to do, we have to turn to artwork, more specifically to craft work.  We learn that no picture exists before it is done.  The conception of a work gives only its temper, not its consistency.  Things take shape in material and in the process of working it.  Anni Albers

quilts deserve respect

I think we need to believe that we have all the time in the world.

I think our inner sense of time has no boundaries.  While living as normal people in the every day present, our inner sense of time flips around, going back to childhood and leaping ahead to future plan or worry or dream. 

This is a post about the new sleeve that I invented for my large linen damask quilt

 'underfoot the earth divine'.

I consider most of my work as having two interesting sides, an outer front side and also a beautiful second side.  

The problem is how to show both sides with elegance.

The usual way to hang quilts on the wall is to sew a sleeve on the back side, but this method covers up the top 4 inches of the second side.  I reject it.

Colour is important.  The second side of 'underfoot the earth divine' is a buttery coloured linen damask.   Dyed with natural wild golden rod blossoms, I call this second side 'overhead the sun'.

For my sleeve, I found several damask napkins that had previously been dyed with golden rod.

I assembled them into a long strip along with a layer of batting and gauze backing cloth and spent a few days quilting the strip so that it would blend with the main quilt.    

My idea was that I could extend the top edge of the quilt with this sleeve and although the function would be obvious, I hoped that  the eye would not be disturbed.   I really didn't know if it was going to work out, but I felt it was necessary to keep going.

It was necessary to take the time to do my best.

Quilts are valuable.

They deserve respect.

This particular quilt has been shortlisted for a major prize in England.

We tested the sleeve in the outdoor gallery.  

The shortlist exhibition is part of Festival of Quilts Birmingham.  

Before I shipped it from Canada for this exhibition, 

it was necessary to create a new label for the piece and sew it to the back.   

(I'll remove this label after the festival because I prefer a more unobtrusive signature) 

Underfoot The Earth Divine

In rural areas of Canada, you can see for miles across the fields.

Inspired by this vastness, I dyed ancient table linens a variety of earthy greys with natural tannins and iron and then cut the cloth into long strips.  The strips were then joined together into a large square that resembles a plowed field. 

Within the large square, a small taffeta square marked with a velvet cross and red thread sits inside a large circle. 

The holes cut into this sewn surface reveal soft earth-coloured velvet that we yearn to touch.

My work starts and ends with the inner world.  

If you live in England and are thinking of going to The Festival of Quilts to see this exhibition, The Fine Arts Textile Award shortlist, along with many many other amazing quilt shows, there is a code that you can use to get a discount on tickets.  Just type FATA 22 into the form.

Enjoy the summer my friends.  It is here.