Judy's Journal: Ethel Jane

Showing posts with label Ethel Jane. Show all posts

Thursday, December 05, 2019

a tisket a tasket

I'm getting very side-tracked with my grandomther's basket quilt.
I worked on it for most of Monday, our first day home after Mexico trip.

I thought of mending each square before working on it.
nah

I questioned why I felt that I needed to do anything with it.
I tried to do something with it back in 2007 and ended up making a paper quilt.
Folded the real one up for twelve more years.

The thing is, it's quite badly made.

Machine stitching is mixed with hand stitching - and this is for both applique and the quilting.
It's as if my grandmother, my mother's mother, didn't know what she was doing.
She was just going for it

I think she stopped working on it because she didn't know how to proceed.

I've been told that I am a lot like her...and handling these patches makes me feel her more closely.
She's right here.
She doesn't mind that I decided to cut her work up.
She's glad that I am working with it.
She was an amazing gardener. and painter.

This always happens to me when I come home from a trip.
I'm faced with a house FULL of artifacts of our long life together,
and I start to put everything in order.

By making new things out of them! It's so foolish.

What I need to do is turn my back on it all and get back to me.
pure me....moving forward.

But instead I wallow in my - our- past.
My grandmother's quilt is just a passing phase. I will get over it.
But for now, it is what I'm working on.

I'm thinking of treating the patched and mended piece like a Japanese boro
densely stitched with big threads.
Lord, save me from myself.

The physical act of making is a way of clearing the mind from demands of the outside world. Somewhere between the heart and the mind is a state of concentration out of which ideas and insights emerge.
Mary Jane Jacobs

Saturday, February 02, 2008

She designed clothing

When I only have one photo of someone, like my grandmother, I use it over and over and over.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

The Jack Pine

My grandmother was an oil painter. Her favourite subject was trees.

The beloved Canadian painter Tom Thomson painted The Jack Pine in 1916. When, in 1918, the National Gallery purchased it, 'The Jack Pine' became quite famous within Canada. Reproductions hung in Canadian schools.

I wonder if my grandmother was influenced by Tom Thomson's painting when she began this painting?

When was it painted, I wonder? If grandma did this painting of a Jack Pine when my mother was eleven, the date would be 1940. If it was painted when my mother was 19 (and this is more likely)the date would be 1948.

It is signed E J in the lower right. (for Ethel Jane)
The artist (my grandmother) was 56 in 1948. A significant age.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

The Blue Vase

This blue vase was hand painted with oil paints by my grandmother, Ethel Jane Paget (nee Bishop). It is signed E J Bishop near the bottom. The blue vase is one of very few antiques from my side of the family.

Monday, December 10, 2007

basket case

I pinned my grandmother's tattered garden bouquet quilt to the studio wall and then reacted on paper with watercolour paint.

My grandmother loved the book Ivanhoe. She was Fort Frances’ first librarian. She wore loose dark dresses with multiple layers and arranged her hair in a low bun. We visited my grandparents about once a week and the kids drank cola on the sun blistered leather bench in her veranda while the adults chatted.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

ethel jane

This is a block from my maternal grandmother's quilt. It is pieced and appliqued and is sewn by both hand and machine. There are small amounts of hand embroidery throughout. I think that she made it when she was in her late 30's or early 40's.

Judy's Journal

Pages