Search Results for: Corona kimono

April 6th was the first thread drawing, the first entry, as I think of it,  on my Corona Kimono.

When I look back at it now, I see the words “A low hum of menace” stitched in purple thread.   I remember that feeling, the uncertainty I and so many other people were feeling.  The expectation of the unknowable.

There’s still so much we don’t know, but it does seem evident that the virus isn’t traveling through the mail.  I don’t know of anyone who is still washing down packages or leaving mail in their garage overnight.

But the USPS is once again on people’s minds.

This time in regards to mail-in voting, a necessary service for so many people, like me and Jon,  who don’t want to risk going to a polling station to vote, during the pandemic.

And like everything else regarding the Corona Virus, there is political controversy surrounding it.

Voter suppression has a long history in our country, beginning with the Founding Fathers who severely restricted who could vote.  It has manifested in some complicated ways over the centuries and this year it’s coming, from our Federal Government, in the form of severely limiting the mail service.

Ever since I started my business, I’ve had a very personal relationship with the post office, which I visit several times a week to ship my art, and the people who work there.

When I think of the first months of the Corona Virus Shut-down and how the postal clerks at my post office, Wendy and Josie, believed they may have been risking their lives to keep the post office going, I get choked up at their courage and commitment.

What I don’t get is how the Post office was important enough to keep open and potentially risk the lives of the people who worked there a few months ago and now it’s just a financial burden.

I made some practice drawing last night as I was listening to the Democratic Convention.  Because of our history, I understand that some of us will probably always have to fight to vote. But I never imagined we’d have to fight for our post office.

You can see the history of my Corona Kimono since that first April 6th entry here. 

I had so many ideas for my Corona Kimono, I didn’t know which to choose for today.  But when I listened to the news this morning, the end of the Moratorium on Evictions hit me the hardest because of the immediate impact it will have on so many people as well as the long term implications.

I placed this entry to my Corona Kimono above Naked Athena on the sleeve of the Kimono.

It’s hard to position the sleeve under my sewing machine to do my tread drawing.  I have to be careful not to sew the pieces of the Kimono together (which I only did once with this drawing, but have done many times before).

I heard today that there can be as many as 40 million evictions.  So I used those words and Moratorium on Evictions Ends with today’s date as the background.

There’s not too much space left on my Corona Kimono.  I still have the backs of the sleeve to do but otherwise, the back of the Kimono is covered. I’ll keep working on it till it’s all filled up.

I still have five Naked Athena Magnets available in my Etsy Shop.  They’re $6 each plus $1 shipping for one or more. $2 from the sale of each Naked Athena Magnet will be donated to Black Lives Matter.  You can see them and buy them here. 

Well I thought about it and decided to make my Naked Athena  Corona Kimono drawing into a magnet.

I just sent the image off to Sticker Mule and should have the magnets sometimes next week.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to sell them on Etsy so I’m limiting it to just 50 magnets.

I see Jen, the woman who sat naked in front of the Homeland Security Troops sent into the Portland Protests, more as the goddess Sheila na gig than Athena.

Sheila na gig is the ancient goddess who sits naked with her legs wide often holding open her vulva.   She is mostly found carved onto churches in Ireland and no one really knows what she represents although there is lots of speculation.

Sheila na gig still shocks people much the way Jen did when she used her nakedness to protest the troops that brought more violence to the Portland Black Lives Matter Protests instead of quelling it.

Jen’s protest was personal, creative, and powerful.

She is the antithesis of the heavily armed and armored men who shot bullets at her feet when she confronted them by standing naked in front of them.  She said she wanted to show them what her “version of vulnerability looks like”…her “version of power“.  She wanted them “to see what they were shooting at.”

I listened to an interview with Jen on the podcast Unrefined Sophisticates.  She didn’t plan her action. She said, “I felt like I was following my nature…my impulse to be who I am”.

And when she sat down in front of them it was her way of saying “Shoot at this.  Look at this, you can’t say I have a weapon now other than this yoni.”

Jen talked about performance art and being a sex worker.  To her, this action came from “a lifetime of experience”.

I’ll be charging $7 for the magnets and will donate $2 from the proceeds of each sale to Black Lives Matter.

I did my first thread drawing on the sleeve of my Corona Kimono.  I had to remove some of the stitches in the sleeve so it could fit  it on my sewing machine.  I’ll sew it back up when I’m done.

On the body of the Kimono, I slipped cotton batting between the outside of the Kimono and the lining.  Especially with the fine fabric that the Kimono is made from, there needed to be batting or interfacing to free motion sew on it.  Otherwise, the fabric pulls and stretches.

I like the way the batting works on the body of the kimono.  The extra thickness adds a depth to the thread drawings.  But I wanted to keep the drape of the sleeves.

So instead of batting, I’m using an interfacing that dissolves with water.  When I finish the drawing, I just spray it with some water and only the stitches will remain.

I did the drawing for this Corona Kimono drawing last week.  Today I stitched it onto the Kimono.

It’s from the photo of the woman who came to be known as Naked Athena after she sat naked in front of the troops’ Trump sent to the Portland Protests.

As I wrote last week, I thought she resembled Sheela na gig, more than Athena, but that she was a goddess in her own right.

Now Naked Athena, who calls herself “Jen” has spoken for herself.

She said, ” I’m a sex worker. My nakedness is political and it is my expression.”   “Other than my feminine response of wanting to show them what my version of vulnerability looks like my message was, ‘We’re all out here, these protesters, [and] the only thing we have in common is we have masks on and we’re out here at night.”

Jen wore only a mask and hat,” because it was cold,” that night.

In between working on my quilt today, I did a drawing that I’m going to use on my Corona Kimono.  It’s of the woman who sat naked, except for a cap and face mask,  in front of the unidentified troops that Trump sent into Portland.

She’s become known as the “Naked Athena”,  goddess of war (among other things), but she looked more like Sheela na gig to me.  The goddess who sits with her legs open, exposing her vulva.  There’s much debate over the meaning of Sheela na gig especially since she shows up on early Christian churches.

But this woman seems to me to be a goddess in her own right.  As Sheela Na Gig still does today, she completely flummoxed those men covered from head to toe in riot gear.

This is all part of life during the Coronavirus.

A few days ago Jon and I pulled up to the drive-through at  Walgreens and saw the sign in the window.  “Tender Shortage, Please Use Exact Change.”

My first thought was how strange the wording was, then I was curious why.  It seems that many people are not using their change when they pay for things because they’re afraid of it spreading the coronavirus.

So there is a shortage of change.

That got me thinking of the things that people have hoarded since the beginning of the virus. And I realized that Toilet paper, almost a symbol of the virus, hadn’t made it to my Corona Kimono yet.

So this entry on my Corona Kimono is dedicated to some of those things that have been hoarded during the virus.

But even as I’m writing this I’m thinking of rubber gloves and paper facemasks which for a while were impossible to get.  Luckily, there is space above the bag of flour where I can add more hoarded things as I think of them.

There were two things that came to mind that have been such a big part of the whole Coronavirus experience that I haven’t included in my Corona Kimono yet.

One was Governor Cuomo, who I and many other people around the country have listened to during this time.  I repeatedly heard people on both sides of the political spectrum say “I never liked Cuomo before, but I like him now.”

That’s pretty unusual these days.

Since the first time I heard one of his daily briefings, I thought they were as close as I would ever get to experiencing one of  Franklin D Roosevelts “Fireside Chats.”

I still find comfort in how rationally and honestly Cuomo relays information about the virus, whether good or bad.  As a kid, I loved the TV show Dragnet which Cuomo quotes in every briefing when he says “Just the facts”.  It was so straightforward and uncomplicated.

So I did a drawing of Cuomo (and put his name in the piece too just in case his likeness is questionable) and stitched some of the phrases he repeats in just about every briefing.  “Blame me” is another of my favorites.

The other thing that I somehow forgot to include in my Corona Kimono is toilet paper.  I already have some ideas for that Corona Kimono entry.  But more about that later.

I always do my thread drawings freehand. I don’t draw a line and trace it.  But I made an exception to that today when I drew the map for this entry on my Corona Kimono.  I just couldn’t draw the map of the southern states to make them look recognizable enough.

It was important to my idea that the states were readable as an image without words. So I found a map online, printed it out then cut it out.  I pinned it to the Kimono then stitched around it.

Once I put the words in, it reminded me of one of those travel postcards from the 1950’s.  I used a grid for the background like the background of a road map.  The little circles inside every other square…well…it just seemed to need them.

I thought about how the last time Jon and I went away was just before the Shelter-in-place began.  It was Sunday, March 8th that we met Jon’s daughter and granddaughter at the Bronx Zoo.

And now, here we are at a time when our world is beginning to open up again.  And when it did the first thing Jon and I did was to go to one of our favorite Vermont Inn’s a day after they opened.

It felt very much like an important milestone in our experience during the Coronavirus pandemic.

So I began with a drawing I did at the Inn of the piece of furniture between two chairs in our room.  I used a photo I still had in my iPhone of a sealion from our trip to the zoo on one side of it.  On the other side, I drew a butterfly.

On our trip, I finished reading the novel This Terrible Beauty by Katrin Schumann and began reading The Language of Butterflies by Wendy Williams.

The Language of Butterflies is a non-fiction book all about butterflies.  Jon got it for me knowing I’d be spewing butterfly stories day and night.  And I am.  But I also read some of the book to Jon and suddenly he’s very interested in butterflies.

I liked the balance of the animals in this piece, one on each end and the symbolism of the butterfly as a new beginning.

Before beginning my stitching today, I had to do some work on the kimono itself.

It’s not always easy to maneuver the kimono on my sewing machine to do my thread drawings.  Usually when I do a thread drawing the ends of the fabric are not sewn down.  I’d start in the middle of the fabric and work my way out to the edges.  But it’s harder to do that on the kimono since there are already seams and no open edges.

So in one place on the Kimono, the fabric was puckered.

I decided the best way to deal with it was to make a dart as is sometimes done when making clothing. I also had to open up some of the seams to trim and rearragne the batting so it laid flat.  ( I put the batting between the lining of the Kimono so I could stitch on it).

This all took some time to get right.  I had to figure it out as I went and after a few tries, I got it right.

I basted the dart, then after I did my thread drawing, I pulled it out.  You can see the fold in the photo of my drawing, and a small pucker in the sleeve to the left, but I think overall it won’t be too distracting.

This is one of those things I’ve been avoiding, not really knowing how I would do it.   But it feels good to have it done and I’m happy with the job I did on it.

Jon and I have eaten at Jean’s Diner a couple of times since they opened up their outdoor dining area in the parking lot.  Eating out, which we used to take for granted has become something very special.  The diners and restaurants still aren’t open where we live, except for outdoor dining.

It’s a milestone in things getting back to normal.