New Work: Words and Textiles/Care Work Makes All Work Possible & ERA NOW

Care Work Makes All Work Possible, Scrubs Shirt by Elaine Luther, 2019

Here’s an idea that’s been bouncing around for a long time that I finally made. I was planning to cut out the letters on my Silhouette electronic cutter, but darn if an operating system (iOS) update didn’t break the Silhouette software. Silhouette does not seem to be staying up late working on the update to work with the latest iOS and I even pondering changing teams to Cricut but was talked out of that.

So, God forbid, I did it by hand. I drew the letters, in my own quirky style, making stencils and then tracing those on to the back of the fabric. I cut those out (so much cutting out!) and ironed them down.

The fabrics include a baby blanket — an actual baby blanket that belonged to one of my kids, and other fabrics chosen because they looked like clothes that would be worn by a caregiver or a care recipient.

While I’m definitely thinking about myself in this piece, as a mom, I’m also thinking of friends taking care of elderly parents, of those taking care of someone in hospice care, and of domestic workers and how they’re underpaid and need/deserve more rights and protections.

All the invisible, unrecognized and under appreciated work that indeed, makes all work possible.

This is the very first step in the project, more to come.

ERA NOW in red letters on top of quilt blocks, by Elaine Luther, 2019.

I have been pondering making an ERA NOW quilt, but am hopeful that it will become outdated very soon, as Virginia is set to ratify the ERA this year and Congress has a bill in the works to remove the time limit for ratification. So I made a mini-version of the idea, using my own hand-cut letters, on top of a found quilt fragment of 4 blocks.