Lots of comments

There were lots of comments on my two latest posts, and rather than just leave a reply comment of my own, where probably nobody would see it, I'll take this post to reply to everybody. (That's one feature that I like in Instagram: if you comment on a post, and subsequently somebody -- the original author, or another reader -- replies or likes it, the system will tell you, even if your comment was made long ago.) 

I wrote about all the reading that I've been doing since lockdown, and how I have come to like e-books better than paper.  Shasta Matova commented:  "There is a time for both, so I don't try to make a choi8ce, but I too like ebooks especially when the library is closed.  Besides the benefits you mentioned, they remember where you left off and give you definitions for words I don't know."  

Idaho Beauty wrote:  "There are times when (e-book) is the only way I can get a book through my library but I don't enjoy it nearly like I do holding an actual book and turning the pages by hand rather than by swiping (and I do hate that sound that is sometimes added to mimic the sound of an actual page turning)."    

Idaho, I too would go crazy with that kind of sound effect.  I always keep the sound turned off on any kind of device, turn it on only if I want to hear something.  I'm sure there's a way you can adjust the preferences in your ebook to deep-six that feature.  It took me several months before I figured out that I could stop the system from showing me passages that other readers had highlighted!  First off, I don't care what other people choose to read and remember, and second, I was really cheesed at how stupid most of the highlighted passages were.

I also wrote about my newest quilt project, a memorial marker for all the U.S. military dead in Afghanistan since 2001, as well as memorials to those dead from covid.  Robbie commented: "I applaud you for all your effort on these projects!  Hope they can all be displayed and appreciated by so many."  Norma Schlager wrote: "I especially like that you are using uniform material on one side and other fabrics on the back.  Can't wait to see how this one turns out."  Martha Ginn wrote:  "Very appropriately dark, drab and sad -- an apt description of this conflict."

Cindy wrote: "I find your work a lovely tribute to those who are gone.  Not morbid in the least."

Irene MacWilliam wrote:  "I think my mind works somewhat like yours.  I am living in N Ireland and wanted to do a piece in memory of all those who had died in our 'troubles' conflict between 1969-1994... This piece has just been bought by our museum which has a collection to do with The Troubles.  I do a lot of work to do with conflict and how it affects families."   Irene, good for you!  I think that one of the most important jobs for artists is to witness to the stupid and destructive things that people do to one another.

Jenny wrote:  "Lest we forget: Afghan casualties from Western intervention amount to around 240,000 whilst Iraqis account for around 200,000...  a companion quilt perhaps?"  Jenny, you're right, war tends to be far harder on the civilian population who just happen to be standing there in the way than it is on the actual soldiers.  It has always been thus, but with modern weapons the killing power of each soldier is vastly greater than it was in past wars.  I can't imagine how one might go about marking that number of deaths; once you get into five figures the total has outgrown any technique that I might use.

Since I last posted, I've finished all the little bits for the Afghanistan memorial -- 2,461 is the number I'm going with. 

Thanks to you all for reading, and for commenting.  It's always good to hear from those at the other end of the cyber-talk!

Another Afghanistan quilt

I wrote earlier about a project that I'm working on now, a postage stamp quilt to mark the US military dead in Afghanistan.  But I am reminded of another quilt I made several years ago that is also about Afghanistan.

In 2015 I had the pleasure of attending and teaching at a big quilting show in Prague, along with my dear friend and art pal Uta Lenk.  Uta had arranged for the show to display a bunch of quilts by International Threads, a group of quilters from four different countries (US, UK, Germany and Israel).  After I said I would come to Prague, she promoted teaching gigs for each of us, which didn't make us rich but did pay for our hotel rooms and a bit of spending money.

Uta in the International Threads exhibit

In between teaching and hanging around our exhibit, we hit the vendors, and discovered a booth selling embroideries made by women in Afghanistan.  We were intrigued by the work, and when we found that many of the embroideries were made by the same woman, Nasrin, we decided to buy eight of them for the members of International Threads, which would be the theme for our next project.

I chose the embroidery with the most abstract and geometric design, and when I made my quilt, I echoed the gray-blue-turquoise-white palette, the bold zigzags and the half-square-triangle sawtooth edging, adding some yellow to pep up the composition.  I called the quilt "Nasrin's Magic Carpet."

With Afghanistan in the news again, I thought it would be a good time to pull out the quilt again and put it up in public.  It's hanging at PYRO Gallery right now, through the end of this month.  And of course I thought about Nasrin and her friends and family, wondering how they have survived through six more years of war and oppression.

After Uta and I bought the embroideries we sent them to our fellow members and I copied from the package the name of the nonprofit that distributed them: The Guldusi Project of Embroidery.  When I looked it up on the internet this week I learned that the organization was begun in 2002 by a German artist.  They have embroidery projects in several rural Afghan villages, and when I paged through the website I was excited to find exactly the kind of embroideries we had bought.

Uta's Nasrin square

You'll notice that the center portion of each square is a kind of mesh, the kind that's used to make the eye holes in a burka. The website confirmed that this type of stitching is called tsheshmakdusi (tsheshmak = eye, dusi = embroidery) and only a few women in a village in Laghman Province use this stitching in their work for sale.  This had to be the source of our Nasrin squares.

Red pin marks Laghman Province

And yes, when I looked through the thumbnails of work on this page of the website, I found one using the same palette, chevrons and sawtooth border, that was labeled "03Nasrin."  Unless there are many women with the same name doing very similar embroidery for the same nonprofit organization, this is indeed our artist.  At least, that's what I'm going to believe.

Uta has also been remembering her Nasrin quilt recently; check it out on her blog.