How to Make Curtains in Ten Easy Steps

Step One: Audition for the Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler.
Step Two: Convince one of your best friends to be in it with you.
Step Three: Meet with the director to talk about the set. She showed me the following picture from a church she had visited:Step Four: Fall in love with this design, which is, unfortunately, by someone else. But feel inspired.
Step Five: Despite having to teach, design costumes for another performance, apply to schools, and being generally overwhelmed, agree to create a series of panels for the backdrop. I was inspired by Georgia O'Keefe images, cathedral stained glass, and the idea of using women's work (quilting and applique) for a play about women's voices and experiences. So along with Liz, the director, we visited some fabric stores and picked out gorgeous theatrical looking red fabric, cut it into two panels, and I got started. The original design had three panels, but we were limited by fabric availability at Joanne's. We also scoured Liz's stores of old fabric and local Goodwills. I would have loved to implement some antique fabric from textile work by other women--but time was an issue (I had about two weeks to finish).
Step Six: Liz had told me to remember that the play (and thus the image) should speak to the beauty and the pain of female experiences with sexuality. So my goal was not to create something too soft or too pretty-- there would be sharpness and bitterness as well. I thought about breaking a mirror and sewing the shards on the fabric--I still like that idea--but due to time constraints I ended up using beads to create jagged edges within the folds.
Step Seven: The final look was always a mystery to me, because I didn't have a flat surface long or wide enough to spread out the entire piece at once. So I worked on it in increments.
Step Eight: As I was adding pieces to it, I kept thinking about the language of the play--there are so many references to fish, water, and slippery rocks ("my vagina--a wide wet water village," so I used some gold fabric with red koi on it to break up the red. I also kept thinking about the idea of the vagina being a heart that can bleed for us (from "I was there in the room").
Step Nine: Hang up the two panels in back of a play. When I finally saw them together hanging up and spaced apart, I couldn't get over how much the central image looked like a map of the United States. I liked the idea of The United States of Vaginas, but it was completely unintentional.
Step Ten: Use the panels in my bedroom and living room as curtains.
THE END