Judy's Journal

I am re-establishing a disciplined rhythm of work and life.
Stitching at least six hours a day, during breaks I harvest the plentiful wild plants along our road and in our property in order to process dye baths.
I visit my father.
Top: the two quilts that cover me in bed
Bottom: one of the new hand embroidered/quilted pieces in progress


"Our eyes, our ears, all of our senses are simply the indications of a veritable reality that ultimately resolves itself in our sense of touch."   Mark Rothko 

Sandra Reford is taking an exhibition of Canadian quilts to Alsace, France in September of this year. I spoke with her on the phone last night, and she has selected about twenty artists or groups of artists from across this huge country, from Whitehorse to Fogo Island. That's incredible. Canada is one of the guest countries this year at the Carrefour Europeen du Patchwork. One of the pieces I'm sending is Twenty Four Hour Care, pictured here. In 2009, it was awarded the best traditional wall quilt in the Canadian Quilting Associations juried show. Sandra has to mail the information to France today, and so we all had to get our act together. This quilt took me seven years to make, as I kept putting it aside for life's tumult. During that period of time my family experienced a marriage, a birth, three deaths, a job loss, and our emptied nest. Each time that I returned to work on it after brief periods away, it was like coming home to mother.

It has been a while since I've talked about the Manitoulin Community Circle Project that continues every Thursday in Little Current. Participants are embroidering 5 inch squares with knots or crosses which are then arranged as nine patches on lightweight flannel foundations. Here they are laid out on the actual size cotton plan. Sometimes, I feel that the project gets ahead of me. I can't keep up to it. These squares from saved wool blankets are for the fourth meditation panel. The painted design with some proposed white work is shown above. Only 117 more marked squares are needed. All welcome.

Twenty Four Hour Care 71" x 71"
This piece will hang as one of the "traditional wall quilts, original interpretation" at the National Juried Show in Saskatoon next week. The border is velveteen with hand stitch. I entered two quilts, you can see the other one here.

I have finally finished the hand quilting on this 75" square velvet and cotton quilt. It has been in the works since December 2002 (about six years). It has seen me through a lot of life; a birth, a marriage, three deaths, career changes, and my nest emptying. I have not worked on it every day, there have been months when it lay abandoned.

I go back and forth about this passion of mine. It's not art I think. It doesn't speak a modern language. Many art quilts our there resemble abstract paintings. They steer clear of traditional patterns. This piece is based on simple first shapes, squares, diamonds, crosses. It calls out to be touched. It wants to wrap you up and keep you safe.


I can't stop making these bed-sized wall pieces. I have decided to call this piece, Slow Art.

"For four decades craft artists were misguided in trying to make painting and sculpture often forgetting or disparging what was useful and valuable and distinctive about crafts. Some of the distinctive qualities of craft that Janet Koplos identifies are attention to surface and its subtleties, scale that is keyed to the human body, and tangibility. Koplos suggests that craft's best route to art is to capitalise on its strength, its own character, doing the things that other art mediums can't do." Ilze Aviks in reference to Janet Koplos' 1992 essay "In Considering Crafts Criticsm"

I've spent most of the last three days in the car. At least when Ned does the driving I am able to stitch.

None of us were able to truly communicate. We were not able to say how we felt.
It's easier to show it.

I read Meeka Walsh's editorial in the March 2007 Border Crossings magazine this morning. Meeka lives in Manitoba and says that "here, with the sky all around me, I can hold longer to some expectations." She references a new book of essays by Cynthia Ozick A Din in the Head . According to Ms Walsh, the title essay reminds us to pay attention to the din (what communication technology informs us) but also to pay attention to the hum of intuition, which is our individual way to live in the world. I agree with Meeka that the way to find our own individual way is through quiet and solitude.
"The inner life is the enemy of crowds, because the life of crowds snuffs the mind's murmuring." Cynthia Ozick