"The Sky Above, the Earth Below, and Us in the Middle"

2013, Judy Ross, 43"x62", hand-quilted.

Thanks to Sharon's good discharge work for those three middle sections (2 circles with black backgrounds) and other small pieces scattered about...

Night Watcher, 2013, 45x64"

 There's a hundred different fabrics here and kinds of: silk, satin, rayon, linen, silk velvet, velveteen, poly, cotton, linen, anything i could find that was blue.  lots of it hand-dyed or painted, shibori from China, Indian prints from Maiwa.  Whatever I had and could beg, borrow, or steal from other quilters.  There are little pictures, like things you might catch a glimpse of at night, scattered throughout.

We sold $5/tickets on it...about 200 of them, and used all the proceeds for the New Pt. Roberts Library project.  And now it lives at someone else's house instead of mine, but that's okay.  Click for a bigger picture.

Orphans Together, 2013, 44"x65"

This quilt began with the long piece of woven Guatemalan fabric on the left side.  Friends with involvement in an orphanage in Guatemala were working there this summer and brought me back odds and ends of weavings that they found in markets.  The material is woven on narrow looms, often, and the women 'seam' the pieces together with rayon embroidery.  The second, long vertical line in the woven piece is a row of embroidered frogs that joined these two pieces. (The first long vertical row is Swiss flower trim.) But the rest of the joined fabric went to make something else, leaving me with this long, narrow, beautiful strip.  Then the job involved finding pieces that would go with it since it was quite a bit heavier than standard fabrics.  Finally I settled on a lot of other 'orphan' pieces, so that I could use lots of ribbons and trim in it, as well as the odd piece of silk tie and decorator sunflower, making it a collection of orphans.  This one is still on my living room wall. 

And soon to be finished (putting the binding on now) is a brown and turquoise quilt which was inspired, in great part, by a piece of Sharon Roye's beautiful discharged fabric that she gave me at Penny's in North Van last spring, maybe, when we met there.  

The work continues!  Long may it wave.  Judy Ross

Also, note that I have turned the administration of the blog over to Sybil, so I trust you will soon be able to make better use of it than you have with me as administrator-not-in-residence, so to speak.  But i'll continue to post my work here from time to time.  jwr