Not Enough

100's of hand embroidered French knots, machine quilted.    Completed Feb 25, 2018.  Size 14" x 8". 

This quilt was made for the week 4 challenge in Project Quilting season 9 - Yellow.  

After yet another school shooting, in Parkland, Florida on Feb 14th, I knew I had to address the problem - its this gun - the AR 15.  Thoughts and Prayers are not enough.  Better mental health services are not enough. Reporting troubled people is not enough.  Active shooter drills are not enough.  Armed guards in schools are not enough.  BAN THIS GUN - and others like it. 

The challenge theme is "yellow", so I selected a solid yellow fabric, and various yellow embroidery threads. I had seen this sort of embroidery, a dense working of French knots that leave a word or image in the negative space, like the image below.  I do lots of embroidered work and wanted to try something new.  

I traced an image of the AR 15, and then transferred it to fabric, on my window 'light box'  - then I basted the outline as a way to create a mark that would not brush off while I worked the knots.  This is the first time I did that step, and I'm really glad I tried it.  I'll do that again! 




   

















I started the French knots, trying to balance the various colors as I went around the outline of this beast.  At the end, I added some color a little more in the gold range, to give definition.  And then finally added the 17 red knots, commemorating the 17 dead at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  I learned after I started working on this piece that one of our cousins was at the high school that day.  I'm so glad Dani is ok  (link to her Good Day LA interview)   The quilting (pop pop pop pop) is based on something she said, "we heard popping sounds", which I've heard in other interviews.  This gun doesn't 'bang',  it pops. 

Here are images of this piece in progress.  The color change of the background is completely due to lighting used when photographing.  That's a whole other interesting exploration.

 

 

The AR 15 is the beast responsible for many of the mass shootings in the past few years.  The damage caused by this weapon is horrifying, as attested to by survivors and first responders (police, ER doctors).  Even veterans who used this gun in battle explain why we don't need it on our city streets.   I'm not a gun enthusiast so I don't know the exact words to use:  is this an assault weapon, a machine gun, an automatic weapon.  I have no idea.  But if you are going to start arguing semantics about this gun, then you are part of the problem. 

EDIT:  My friend Jesse Rabinowitz stated it this way:   

 "Your ability to avoid dealing with the murder of innocents with a haughty, faux-expert lecture on the nuances of high-volume murder weapons betrays either an emotionally-ignorant, completely-numb, tone-deaf response to our frequent mass-shootings, or a calculated willful ignorance of the mass-murders of innocence, in a hopelessly morally-withered clinging to an adolescent notion of liberty without responsibility. If you think that liberals give a flying fuck about the fine distinctions between ARs, assault rifles, automatics, semiautomatics, or fucking rocket launchers, or that we are too dumb to know the differences, you are deeply mistaken. If we stumble in murder-weapon syntax, it's not because we couldn't study gun magazines, it's because we know high-volume killing machines when we see them and don't bother getting wound up in anal distinctions about weaponry while missing the carnage that people like you gloss over."

I'm NOT advocating for complete gun control.  I understand why some people like to shoot guns.  I'm just not one of them. 

Its only February.  These 17 deaths make it 53 THIS YEAR.  If you add in the physical injuries that's 137.  In February.  And that doesn't count the PTSD - all those people who are traumatized by the popping sound a gun makes,  by the rattle of a classroom door handle,  by a kid in their school who threatens violence.  And it doesn't count all the family members who are traumatized by the loss of their children, parents, siblings, cousins, friends. 

Enough is enough.  We must do something to protect our citizens in schools, at concerts, in night clubs, on the street.  There is simply no reason for military style weaponry to be available to civilians.  I hope the kids pushing for change  are successful, and shame on us adults for not taking care of this for them.  The agenda of the NRA has morphed from 'educating people about gun safety' to selling as many guns as possible.  This is why their answer to this shooting is to  arm more people.  NO!  NO MORE GUNS. Enough already. 

Now more than ever, peace,

Paula

PS:  thanks Flaun Cline for the stats on deaths and injuries so far this year.  Tragic stuff.