Your Fragile Life
naturally dyed vintage table linens, bordered with hand woven silk from India, hand pieced and hand quilted, 175 x 172 cm or 69 x 68 inches, 2024
The fabrics were sorted by value, light to dark.
Beginning with the lightest value in the centre, rows of hand pieced squares were added in turn around all four sides until the that particular colour ran out.
The more that you use linen damask, the softer it gets.
Using them up until they ran out seemed a metaphor for our own mortality. We do not know how long we have.
Intimacy
The grid of hand pieced squares were then quilted in the seamlines ( in the ditch) and also with a secondary grid. The appearance of a safety net and the softness of the fabrics reads as loving strength.
The second side of Your Fragile Life, the fabric is hand woven silk from India that was given to the artist by a textile artist in Italy who was decluttering her own studio. The size of the hot pink silk determined the finished size of the quilt, and was used in its entirety.
hand quilted, 175 x 172 cm or 69 x 68 cm
The title is Intimacy because it is the back side of the quilt, and when you pull a quilt over you, the back side is the side that touches your body in an intimate way.
This is a quilt about touch and time and care.
Premier showing at The Festival of Quilts, Birmingham UK, in Judith Martin's solo exhibition, Softer and Dreamier.
