Valentine's Day is nothing we usually celebrate. Germany doesn't have its own Valentine's Day tradition. This year will see an exception.
I wanted to experiment with 3D cloth weaving like Jude showed it in her Boro Class. I am fascinated by the process and have some shapes in mind I want to put to test. So for trying out the method, why not make a heart shaped pillow for a friend of mine who certainly will appreciate it. I used some old tablecloth for the basis, stuffed it with some more old fabric scraps and then looked for appropriate fabrics, i.e. some pinks and greens. Pinks and greens are spring colours (and the signature colours of my friend's cupcake shop as well). Although I prefer not to dye with synthetic dyes anymore, I still have a lot of fabrics from my Procion MX days.
One special fabric found its way on the pillow: fragments from an old cotton blanket my father brought back from military hospital when he was wounded in WWII. Which made me think a lot about him while sewing and stitiching.
He was 20 when he was drafted. He didn't really have a choice. Deserting never was an option back then. My father's family lived in a barren rural mountain region for over 500 years. For over 500 years they were farmers, shepherds and butchers. Where should he go? So, he was 21 when they marched towards Russia, and in a way he got lucky. Somewhere on the way, he got caught by a shrapnel and lost his left leg at the thigh and parts of his right calf. For him, the war was over. That he survived the injury and was able to become an almost whole person with wife and three children and a job as landscape gardner for the city council, showed how resilient he mentally and physically was.
When I was born, he was already 46. Due to his disability and his age, he never was one of the active fathers running around with his children. (We went swimming together very often, in the water it didn't matter how many legs he had). But he was a good father nevertheless. And he taught me well. When I asked him as a little child, what happened to his leg, he told me, he lost it in the war.
"What is war, dad?" "War is bad."
It's a simple as that.
He died on his 88th birthday 4 years ago in February.
I think it is fitting to incorporate a blanket from a military hospital from one of the worst wars in human history into a little love present to Valentine's Day.
Make Love Not War