Baby Quilt for Aili

 Baby Quilt for Aili,  cotton, hand pieced and hand quilted, 2016.  43 x 44 inches.

Our third grandchild,  Aili Evelyn, was born March 25, 2014.  Her dad, Jay, is our son.

I wanted the quilt to have a grid of red dots on both sides.  I think that dot grids are like safety nets and I wanted her to feel safe when covered with this quilt.  I started making it before she was born.

It's a traditional log cabin quilt made from one inch wide strips, none of the fabrics are dark.  

It holds the 2 years of time it took me to make when so much happened within our family.   

In 2015, we had a Christmas eve gathering and followed the Estonian tradition of everyone sharing a talent.  People told jokes or did magic or sang songs, it was a lot of fun.  Ned recited Twas the Night Before Christmas by heart.  My talent was quilt making and I showed Aili's quilt and talked a bit about it.   

The back of the quilt also has red dots.  I connected some of them to spell her name.  The date of her birth is embroidered on the back, as well as my name, Judith Evelyn.  Aili and I have the same middle name.

I borrowed it back in July to clean and photograph.  Those are Aili's 10 year old hands in the top of the photo.  xo

2016 

quilt number 112

Underfoot the Earth Divine / Overhead the Sun a two-sided quilt

Underfoot The Earth Divine was completed in 2020 and first exhibited in 2021 in a two-person exhibition with Penny Berens entitled In the Middle of the World.

The quilt is two sided. Both sides are made from linen damask table linens that have been dyed with local plants.  Underfoot (above) is dyed with sumac leaves and a bit of iron.

Overhead (below) is dyed with golden rod wild flowers.

For the quilt top above, Judy cut several dyed table cloths into long strips and sewed them together again using a sewing machine.  They took up her whole design wall.  The finished size of this piece is 89 x 89 inches.

Once the strips were sewn together, the artist cut into the sewn strips to make holes and then filled the holes with velvet that had been sewn together in strips.  So when you come across those velvet areas with your hand, you can feel the softness and the richness.

The second side is made up of only 4 large pieces of linen damask which can be seen in the photo above.  The circle that appears on this side is made with thread that was stitched into the first side of the quilt and is received on the second side like a gift.  The thread is a fine black wool.

In the lower part of the circle is the square that is the reverse of the taffeta square in the front.  This square was not stitched with black thread but with fine red thread, and very densely.  See the detail below.

 Underfoot the Earth Divine / Overhead the Sun has been exhibited widely since 2021.

In 2022 it travelled to England to be part of the Fine Art Textiles Award Shortlist exhibition at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham.  It received the award of "highly commended".

In 2023 it went to Kenora Ontario as part of In the Middle of the World exhibition.  This two-person exhibition has a free lance curator, Miranda Bouchard, who travelled to Kenora with Penny and Judy in order to make some presentations.  Judy Martin lived in Kenora for 10 years between 1982 and 1992 and her two younger children were born there.

Later in 2023, Underfoot the Earth Divine was part of Quilts=Art=Quilts, an annual exhibition of art quilts that occurs at the Schweinfurth Art Centre in  Auburn New York, USA.  It won the Schweinfurth award. 

In 2024, this quilt will show one more time as part of In the Middle of the World, this time in Nova Scotia in the Annapolis Royal Art Centre.  The show opens September 7 2024, and Judy and Penny and Miranda will attend the opening and will speak.

Quilt number 111   2020