Your Fragile Life / Intimacy

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.

Some of the old fabrics were quite fragile, but the hand piecing and hand quilting strengthened them.

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.  

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.

Intimacy

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.

Far Away Stars / Cloudy Day

Far Away Stars, detail

velvet, silk, cotton, natural dyes, cotton thread, hand quilted to two layers of wool 2024

233 x 132 cm or 91 x 52 inches 

Far Away Stars:  Full view

This piece was started around 2011 when I was teaching myself about natural dyes.  What you see here are my small beige learning experiments that I made while using plants from my yard.  The fabrics are joined together in horizontal rows.  Since those first days, I have added more three-dimensional horizontal tucks to catch your eye and that refer to the horizon line.  

The horizon line is our constant friend that gives a place to look beyond and enter a reverie.  

Cloudy Day, full view

Cloudy Day, cotton and velvet shapes attached with cotton and wool thread to the wool backing cloth.

Hand stitched and hand quilted.  233 x 132 cm or 91 x 52 inches  2024

Cloudy Day is a surprise on the second side of this quilt. 

It is one of my two-sided quilts.

There is a horizon line on this side too.

In progress for 13 years, Far Away Stars / Cloudy Day had its first public showing in 2024 in the UK at the Festival of Quilts.   Part of the solo exhibition:  Softer and Dreamier  

This two-sided quilt was then part of Quilts = Art = Quilts at the Schweinfurth Art Centre, Auburn New York from October - January 2025   

Tomorrow Is Another Day / Mercy

Tomorrow Is Another Day  linen damask, indigo dye, natural plant dye, cotton threads, 48 x 82 inches or122 x 208 cm, 2024

An applique of a dark and stormy sky has a title that calmly and hopefully references the future:  Tomorrow Is Another Day.

Mercy  plant dyed damask table linen, cotton thread, 48 x 82 inches or 122 x 208 cm, 2024

The reverse side of the piece is made from three smaller pieces of different-hued damask and is entitled Mercy.

The three pieces of the second side receive the stitches from the first side as if a single original and courageous drawing.

Quilts have two sides and teach us that everything is connected.  This piece encourages kindness, forgiveness, courage and hope in dark times.  

When you are worried, remember to look at the sky.  The answers are there.

Have compassion.  Tomorrow is Another Day.

This quilt had it's premier showing in Judy Martin's solo exhibition at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham England August 2024.  The title of her show is Softer and Dreamier. Softer and Dreamier. 

Currently on display in room 309 until November 2025 in the Gladstone House Hotel in Toronto, Ontario as part of an award from Craft Ontario.  Read more here.