Although the Mother’s Day Project began a little over a year ago, I think of Mother’s Day as an anniversary marker for the journey that began in the spring of 2007.

It was a simple idea.  We would, all of us, join together to honor the mothers, daughters, wives and lovers - the female members of the Coalition forces who had died in service to their country while fighting in Iraq.  We would stitch their names onto swatches of muslin, and I would complete the process by fashioning a simple tote bag from the stitched names to circulate amongst ourselves as a reminder of the ongoing conflict and the many thousands of dead men, women and children whose names are either unknown or too numerous to fit onto a portable memorial like a tote.

But, something happened along the way.  Many, if not most artistic concepts evolve and change over time.  Different paths make their presence known.  The light shifts, illuminating new possibilities.  As someone who is most accustomed to working alone, I seldom take note of these changes in direction.  They are part of the artistic process.  A given.

However, with so many individuals participating in The Mother’s Day Project (nearly 200 of you!) the weight of responsibility to stay true to my original concept for this project is something I have taken quite seriously.  I am therefore more than a bit nervous about announcing some changes, but also excited at some new possibilities and pathways that have evolved from the original idea.

Changes

The final phase of The Mother’s Day Project will not be a tote bag that circulates among the contributing stitchers.  The construction of the first complete panel of embroidered names has become a work of collage, layers of fabric and hand-applied beading and embroidery that is simply not well-suited to use as any type of bag.  It’s too fragile, too physically heavy and, most importantly . . .

It’s too weighted with emotional significance to release into the world with no guaranty that each home it entered would provide the protection it deserves for the sacred object it has become.  Sacred, because of all of your individual contributions that are now joined together into a whole.

I’ve come to realize (perhaps more slowly than I should have) that this project - in its entirety - has taken on the weight of a memorial with a capital “M.”  It simply would not be fair to the memory of those whose names we’ve stitched, nor to those of you who have contributed to the project to allow the work to be lost in the mail or destroyed or damaged by accident or neglect.  Perhaps it was idiotic on my part, but I did not foresee the project coming together in this way, with this amount of significance.

Your Help is Needed

The question now becomes, how to alter this final phase of the project and still honor the spirit of the original idea?  It is imperative to me that the final work, the collaborative end point of this journey be placed in a publicly accessible site such as a museum, or a traveling exhibit.

Many of you are artists yourselves.  Others have ties to various branches of the military.  All of you have invested energy and emotion in this project.  I am asking you to give some thought to places in your community, or exhibitions and museums you have knowledge of where this finished project might find a permanent home.  Write to me.  Give me a contact name if you have one.  I will do the follow-up.

I would also like to hear from you about other ideas for carrying on the original concept.  Should commercially produced canvas tote bags be imprinted with photos of the finished project and provided to each of the stitchers?  Would you prefer a photo of the name you stitched as a personal memento?

Please let me know your thoughts.

And, today, as you celebrate Mother’s Day with your children, your mother and all the women who have played a significant role in your life, I know you will be joining me in remembering everyone who has lost someone in the Iraq War.  Hold them in your hearts and continue to work for peace.

Back in February, I had the opportunity to participate in something called Charity Night at the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat in Tacoma, Washington. There, in front of an audience of perhaps 300 knitters, I talked about The Mother’s Day Project, read from letters I have received and showed a five minute video of some of the name swatches gathered from the nearly 180 project participants.

Since I don’t solicit donations for the MDP, I designated two nonprofit groups to receive any donations that audience members felt inclined to give: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (for the important and necessary work they do to collect and analyze statistical information about the Iraq War, the numbers of dead, wounded, missing, etc.) and Heifer International (for their practical gifts of livestock and other domesticated animals to impoverished people and families around the globe to assist them in becoming self reliant and to develop sustainable communities).

I’ve always known that knitters, as a group, are the kind of people I want to hang with. They’re funny, often irreverently so, usually pretty darn smart (’cause we have to do all that math and visual charting stuff, to say nothing of the advanced hand-eye coordination skills which indicates good left/right brain development) and they’re generous.

Actually, generous does not seem an adequate description for what happened on Charity Night.

Nearly $1,000 was collected for my two nonprofit entities, which included more than enough to purchase a “Knitting Basket” from Heifer International, and a total of $6,645 was raised and shared between all of the charitable organizations with representatives on the stage with me that night.

Knitters.

I’m humbled in your presence.

Sorry, to keep you waiting so long. The first tote bag is in the construction phase and I’m happy to present you with this preview and short update on the project.

There is still a ways to go since most of the remaining construction - adding more names, incorporating the extra stitchery some of you provided and building upon the layers of collage with embroidery, beading and other embellishment - is all done by hand. However, I’ve made a lot of progress in just the past couple of weeks.

Also, I wish to thank the organizers of the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat in Tacoma, Washington, for giving me the opportunity to present a short description and video about The Mother’s Day Project at their annual gathering last weekend. The response was overwhelmingly positive and resulted in being able to raise funds for Iraq Coalition Casualty Count and Heifer International. My sincere thanks to everyone who donated money and/or took the time to speak with me personally. I appreciate your heartfelt responses and your support.

One side of tote with approximately half of total names in place

Close up of embellished section

Another close up

Opposite side of tote bag ready for names to be attached

Hope you enjoyed seeing what I’ve been up to. Thank you, everyone, for your lovely stitching and written notes which continue to inspire me daily.

Ashley Sietsema, 20, a member of the Illinois Army National Guard serving Operation Iraqi Freedom, died November 12th in Kuwait City. She died of injuries suffered in a one vehicle crash when the ambulance she was driving overturned.

Her life was full of promise, her family and friends said. She married Max Sietsema in April. She had been enrolled at Northern Illinois University prior to being deployed, and hoped to become a nurse.

Ashley Sietsema is the 100th female Coalition soldier to die as a result of serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Spc. Christine Ndururi, 21, died November 5th while enroute to Iraq. According to the Massachusetts Eagle Tribune:

Army Spc. Christine Ndururi of Massachusetts called her family Monday morning to give them the news that her first overseas deployment would be to Kuwait and then Iraq.

The next day the Department of Defense announced that the 21-year-old soldier died of a “non-combat related illness” at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.

The family is still waiting for an explanation about how she died.

The public affairs office at Fort Hood, Texas — where Ndururi was assigned to the 4th Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment — released no further details about the death. Spokeswoman Nancy Bourget said it remains “under investigation.”

“She has not been sick,” Ndururi’s father, Wilson Wachira, 45, said yesterday at the family’s home at 46 Woodbine Path. “I’m waiting for them to tell me what happened. She was not ill, unless she was ill after 9 o’clock when she talked to her mother. Before she was deployed there, she had to have a medical checkup.”

Ndururi, an automated logistical specialist, called her mother at 9 a.m. Monday from a pay phone in Rhode Island to tell her about her assignment.

Then the parents heard from the military at 9 a.m. on Tuesday that their daughter was dead.

“To me, she was OK,” said her mother, Mary Mwaniki, 45, recalling the last time she spoke to her daughter. The conversation didn’t last long. Mwaniki, a nursing aide, was at work. She told her daughter to call back, but she never did.

Ndururi enlisted in the Army reserves while a high school senior, her father said. The family moved to Massachusetts from Kenya when she was 16.

The following report about on the death of Carletta S. Davis, 34, was taken from the Fairbanks Daily News .  Staff Sgt. Davis was killed November 5th when an IED exploded near her humvee in Iraq.

Lavada Napier came to Alaska in 1979 because the wages were much higher than in Louisiana at the time. She left her four children with their grandmother, but after nine months of working, she saved up enough money to move them up here, including her oldest, Carletta.

Napier, who lives in Fairbanks, recounted that Davis was the best-behaved of her children while growing up. An elementary school principal once called her to tell her that two of her younger children had been acting up, and was shocked to learn they were related to her older daughter because Davis was such a model student.

“She didn’t give anyone any trouble,” Napier said. “She was the type of person who always tried to do the right thing.”

Davis enlisted in the Army in 1994, a move that surprised her family.

“I was more afraid for her than herself,” Napier said. “She was scared of spiders and roaches and I said, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing because you’re going to be sleeping outside on the ground.’”

Davis was a health care specialist assigned to the 10th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division. She was previously deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1996 and 1997. This was her third tour in Iraq, having served there from April 2003 until March 2004 and from December 2004 until November 2005.

Napier said Davis was worried about returning to Iraq and made sure to spend more time with her family, including her husband and three sons before her most recent deployment.

“I think she was concerned particularly for her children,” Napier said. “She knew the danger of going back a third time.”

She often visited her mother in Fairbanks and was debating between moving there or to Wasilla eventually.

“She came here and said, ‘I don’t know if I can put up with the cold, but you all can, so I should be able to put up with it,’ but she didn’t get that opportunity,” Napier said.

Davis is survived by her mother, husband and three sons, Trey, Theodore and Tyrique.

Alger, 30, died Nov. 1 in Shubayshen, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near her vehicle.  She was a native of New Auburn, Wisconsin.

After signing up for the National Guard, she was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), out of Fort Campbell, Ky.

Alger grew up in New Auburn, attended Chetek High School and the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, where she studied graphic design.

At River Falls she was also on the rodeo team and served as president of the Wisconsin Girls Barrel Racing Association.

The deaths of two female Navy seamen were announced by the Department of Defense on October 24th.  Seaman Anamarie Sannicolas Camacho, 20, and Seaman Genesia Mattril Gresham, 19, were shot and killed October 22 in the barracks of the American military base in Bahrain. The alleged shooter, a male US Navy sailor, is still in critical condition, suffering from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Lance Corporal Sarah Holmes, a member of the British Army since the age of 16, died tragically in a vehicle accident just days before the end of her tour of duty.  She was serving in Qatar at the time of the accident, and died surrounded by her family at a hospital in the U.K.  She was 26 years old.

A 35 year old wife and mother of three, Army Staff Sergeant Lillian Clamens was one of two people who died October 10th, according to the Department of Defense.

Insurgents fired rockets on Camp Victory in Baghdad from a nearby abandoned school killing Clamens and Army Spc. Samuel F. Pearson, 28, Westerville, Ohio.

Clamens was assigned to the 1st Postal Platoon, 834th Adjutant General Company, Miami.

Family members say Lillian Clamens was due to return to Homestead, Fla., next week.

More information about Sgt. Clamens and the homecoming celebration being planned by her family can be found here.