Yesterday, Marie of Make and Takes blog alerted us to The Mother’s Day Project, a needlework tribute to “the mothers, daughters, wives and lovers – the female members of the Coalition forces who died in service to their country while fighting in Iraq.” I was so touched by this idea that I wrote to Anne Landre, the project’s founder, for a bit more information. Here is Anne’s reply:
The reason I named it The Mother’s Day Project has more to do with the original purpose of Mother’s Day, which was to promote peace. As of today, 109 young women have died in Iraq – many of them mothers, but not all. Their stories are unique in that the war in Iraq has been the first time women soldiers have routinely been placed in combat situations by the US Military. This has raised some pertinent issues in the areas of health services, sexual assault, and of course, the effect on families back home.
All of those issues are of interest to me, but my primary reason for starting this project was to simply draw attention to the loss of human life in Iraq…
Currently, there are more than 200 volunteers from 37 states and five countries involved in this effort. I welcome more volunteer stitchers, but may soon have to start a waiting list…
I’m a writer and fiber artist with a full time job that’s pretty much unrelated to anything creative. I work on The Mother’s Day Project in my spare time, and there isn’t much of that. I’m 54 years old, married and live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My other blog is ThreadingWater and I can also be found on ravelry under the name “threadingwater.”
How thrilling it is to see a project such as this become so successful. Thank you, Anne, for making it possible.
If you’d like to know more about the project or want to volunteer, see The Mother’s Day Project site.
Looking for more Mother’s day patterns? Check out these Mother’s Day Embroidery articles we wrote previously as well as these Patterns from Etsy.
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