Sewing in the time of COVID-19 – Week 15
This weekend I was supposed to be in Lincoln Nebraska for the Opening Reception of the environmental-themed exhibit “For the Love of Gaia” ….as a guest curator for the International Quilt Museum. Instead we had a virtual opening event on Zoom last night, and thankfully most of the artists were able to attend, including artists from Australia, Canada and the UK. So the silver lining is…we were able to include our international artists! Thank you to the IQM staff for making this happen. We recorded a video of the event which I will share with you this week.
The Tokyo Quilt Festival has officially cancelled their event for January 2021. QuiltCon is taking their Feb 2021 event online and we are a Gold sponsor. I feel like we are all blindly making our way through a dark tunnel – together. For those of you who are stressed out and frustrated – I can relate – but we are all right here together in this same strange place of not knowing what is going to happen but needing to keep our families and co-workers safe. And we can only hope that the people around us are also committed to keeping us safe. I am grateful that we were able to build a company culture of safety at the beginning of this madness, for our family business and our employees.
Fortunately we still have Nature to bless us with her healing colors and sounds. It seems like a really good time to learn more about birds, for instance. Remember last September when we were warned that we’ve lost 3 billion birds in the last 50 years? That problem has not gone away, but during this shutdown many of us have stopped not just to smell the flowers, but also to listen to the birds, and look for the bees. I have become more attuned to the bird songs in my neighborhood, and have downloaded an app to help identify bird calls. Those of you Audubon members and Bird Watchers are way ahead of me, but I must admit that now I listen for the birds that sing at dusk and dawn now, and I find a special poignant beauty as their warbling tune rings out across the darkening sky.
Flowers and birds are two of our most popular motifs, which is why we have featured them in this e-newsletter. As we fill our quilts with the images that bring us comfort and joy, we are nurturing ourselves and our loved ones, to help us get to the other side of the dark tunnel with our sanity intact.
with Hope for the Future,
Luana and Paul
