The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance project honors lives lost during pandemic
This year has been nothing short of countless crossroads.
COVID-19 has taken the lives of more than 220,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“There were a lot of people dying. You couldn’t get near those dying and so many were becoming lost and forgotten,” said Suzi Gough, executive director of the Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance. “It didn’t seem right and… there should be some way to keep these memories alive, to indicate the enormity of the problem.”
In reading the “Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle,” the quote “the makers of AIDS quilts humanized lost loved ones who were anonymized as statistics” resonated with Gough.
“There were somany parallels between the AIDS crisis and the pandemic,” she said.
Reaching out to Chrissy Weeks, a volunteer and technical advisor for Sewing Masks for Area Hospitals,
Gough shared her thoughts.
Inspired by the AIDS quilt, they contacted Mike Smith, a co-founder of the Name Project AIDS Memorial Quilt Project.
They learned from Smith that each panel of the AIDS quilt was three feet by sixfeet, representing the size of a grave. Each quilt was comprised of 48,000 panels.
Wanting this project to be manageable for travel and exhibiting, the “tribute” size of seven by nine inches was selected .“It was not a random choice. It is the size of a surgical facemask,” Gough noted.
Sixty-three tributes, seven columns and nine rows, would make up one banner.
“The only guidelines to making a tribute is the finished size and should include the tribute’s name,” the director said. “Any textile technique — felt, knit it, embroidery, applique — for example. Anything you feel capable of doing and best represents the person.”
“While we would like for it to be people who one has known personally, it is not a requirement in making a tribute for the banner,” Weeks said.
A database will be kept of who made each tribute and why it was made.
“We wanted away to show other show many people had been lost. For people who are grieving, make something tactile that would help them grieve, but also provide a memory of their lost ones,” Gough said.