Category Archives: 2025 Archive

QUILTING MEMORIES AND MEMORY QUILTS

POSTED: APRIL 1, 2025

Regular readers of my little posts may recall that last August I did a post on Tulip, the Dutch Sheep Dog who was part of Janice and Jims family and who passed last summer.

Tuli had been a wonderful part of the family and at one point in the grieving process last August their daughter Jade came up with the idea of making quilts from Tuli’s scarves. To some this may sound like an ill-conceived plan, but not in this circumstance. You see as a very long-haired dog, grooming (brushing out that long hair) is necessary every week, so fifteen years ago when they decided to get another long haired type, Janice and Jim contracted with a local groomer to bring her in every week. Most weeks would just be a brush out and every two or three weeks would be the more complete “spa day”. LOL.

The groomer they chose had a policy that any dog in for grooming regardless of the type of service, would go home with a little scarf around their neck. A nice treat for a pup who occasionally goes to the groomer. But in Tulips case, even with them going south for a few months in the winter, where that Key West groomer did not put scarves on the dogs, fourteen years of weekly scarves creates a lot of fabric. And of course, its not just fabric, they were scarves that Tuli would wear and that family members would have memories of her.

But lots of fabric scarves don’t make a quilt without some effort. That pursuit is one that Janice, who studied fashion design, had her own fashion label and continues to have textile art as part of her art practice, has down. She had made many quilts in the past and vintage quilt patterns are ones that have been part of her inspiration for her painted pieces. She does abstractions of quilt patterns with acrylic paint on Baltic birch panels or vintage ironing boards.

So they set off to learn to make quilts with their mom. They both had a background in art and design but neither of them had ever used a sewing machine or learned any textile art techniques. From August to December 2024 they worked away on their quilts every Sunday with their mom while Jim would work on dinner and get them coffee and help out where needed. The process had much in common with an Irish Wake. As they would work on their quilts the stories of Tuli’s life would spill out, some with laughter, some with tears.

By late December when Janice and Jim packed up to go to Key West the quilt tops (the detailed part) of each of their quilts were finished and all that remained was for them to start up on the project in the spring when their parents would make it back to Toronto.

But parallel with this exercise Janice was doing one of her own. It started much later than Jade and Jason as in the early weeks she was teaching them techniques, but by the middle of autumn Janice was at it full time, hoping to finish in time to enter an art show in Key West.

That art show she has been in before, called From A Woman’s Hand.  It is held at the Custom House Museum, a fine old brick structure that is home today to a lot of key west historical art and memorabilia including a significant collection of Mario Sanchez Intaglio wood carvings. I will do a piece on that at some point.

So the quilt was finished and lovingly packed up for the trip south and shortly after arriving she learned the judges had liked it and it would be in the show, running from Mid January into April. Here are some images from the show.

Custom House Museum, Key West

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Django.

THE TURN

 

We all know the turn. Its that point when everything shifts -often in a significant way. In the book where the protagonist is seemingly losing whatever battle has been waged but then some event occurs and that underdog is now moving ahead.  Optimists look for the positive upswing, pessimists know there will always be a downswing.

In the ebb and flow of most things the turn occurs and when it is a dramatic turn well that’s something we can’t take our eyes away from.

Usually most of us will have an interest in some big world events that are going well or not, and at the same time some personal things, health, happiness, financial security, love, that will be going well or not, but the whole thing is a mixture of some aspects getting better and some getting worse. It keeps us on an even keel psychologically.

But every now and again a lot of stuff will turn so powerfully bad that its hard to see the elements that have remained positive.

Donald Trump has really shaken me.  I am losing count of the new American States that Trump is musing about annexing: Canada – 51st , Greenland – 52nd , Panama Canal 53rd , Mexico 54th , Palestine with Gaza as 55th and West Bank as 56th or are they to be 55A and 55B?

And this of course to be part of the United States that are not really that “United”.

And how are these states to be treated – like they currently treat Puerto Rico?  YIKES!

While this is going on down here on earth, the Musk Monster is musing about which planets should also be annexed.

And those employees at USAID who had dedicated their careers to trying to have a positive outreach for the U.S. are now about to be unemployed. The incremental inroads the United States has made in outreach in a treacherous world over decades was wiped out with the stroke of a sharpie. This is one of the organizations that kept events like 9/11 from happening much earlier. At this point every month of hardship created by actions like Israel and the U.S. destroying Gaza is pushing more young men to be prepared to die for the cause of fighting America.

So why am I going on with such a perspective that is all about the negative. Well, there is not much that is positive right now. As I age, I am increasingly seeing friends health change quickly. One day they are thriving and the next struggling to survive from one condition or another. Another big example is climate. In a relatively short period of time our planets health has swung from coping to perilous.

Oh, oh, I can feel a metaphor coming on……

 

THE TURN

Newfallen snow,

Lovingly rolled,

And assembled.

Now reduced

To a tophat

And carrot

In a pool of water.

 

 

But perhaps I have just tuned in to the movie at the wrong point. Things were bad, then they got worse, then another level of worse …… and now perhaps…… the turn.

Django

THE LOSS OF A FRIEND

Posted: Feb 1, 2025

This business of learning to be a human is tough work.  Last week I turned Seventy-One and I am still learning the right and wrong way to be. At my little birthday celebration, a friend of many years decided to say some very upsetting things to me and about me. She had consumed a good amount of alcohol but that just loosened her lips – the thoughts were already swirling around in her brain before she started drinking.

I was gutted. She was not a partner or sibling or child of mine or one of the people who I would put in my top five closest friends. But she certainly was someone I saw as a friend, enjoyed her company and respected her thoughts.

The loss of someone who matters to you is a big deal. I have had friends who are divorced who are living happily today in a new relationship but still feel the loss of the marriage, and the loss of the shared memories with their old partner. For some it has been compartmentalized and they move on and focus on the here and now, but for others that loss moves with them like a shadow.

Friends with siblings they are estranged from, or children or parents they are estranged from often are like this.  I have seen it with one of my buddies who became estranged from his sister and never reconciled before she died. The pain of that just lingers, and I can’t imagine kids not having a relationship with parents or vice versa.

Now I am not talking about the cases where someone has turned out to be a monster or who has willfully set out to harm the other person but most of these situations are not that – they are very conventional, garden variety disputes between people who otherwise would have an ongoing relationship.

So how do I learn from this and move forward? Well, the adult thing to do is to apologize to her for whatever it is that I said or did to make her so upset. I am quite opinionated and at the drop of a hat will opine on many topics, some of which I really do know about and can add some value to the conversation and others, well not so much.  The friend who was so upset with me is much the same. When our thoughts are in sync, its fine but at times if not in sync the dialogue can go off the rails.

I did try to apologize at the time but she was too worked up so will try that again at one point so we might go forward with some level of relationship. But with that said, some things once said, can not be unsaid, so while I will apologize for whatever it was that I did to upset her, I know the relationship will never be the same.

In a volatile world with so many challenges ahead of us, it is our relationships that are more important than ever, and I am starting my seventy- first year down one, but the silver lining is for me that in future this experience has taught me to dial back sharing my opinions as often or with such vigor. It is important to learn from every experience.

Django