New Year's Day Things : Some Quilting, Some Hard.

January 2nd and reality sets in.
Festivities are over – and yes, Christmas decor is already put away and I am diving into the 5 days remaining before I leave for Los Angeles on the 7th and meet up with my Craftours group on the 8th as we make our way to Australia!
That means there will be little time for quilting over the next several days as I get all my ducks in a row and ready to fly.
However…there was time yesterday to finish this ONE LONG SEAM that joined the diagonal row I shared in yesterday’s post that was half finished from New Year’s Eve jammie sewing and tv binge watching.As I also mentioned as my plan for travel sewing…I’m simply bringing neutral pieces and will plan on making the remaining setting triangles for the rest of the quilt top. Why? Because they are BORING. And getting them done and out of the way will be a complete win for the rest of the quilt top.

Janet asked in the comment section if I have a master plan for this quilt. Sort of!

I have a photo I took of a tile floor that was only partial…meaning the camera could only pick up so much of it.

From there I grabbed hexagon graph paper and drew out the design I wanted, making some revisions along the way. From there it is a simple repeat of pattern (I didn’t color out the whole quilt.) and I will end it when it is “Big Enough.” It’s kind of a design-as-you-go process, which is easy if the project is scrappy (No running out of background fabric or not having enough of the others) as I can always throw in more fabrics as I go.

That’s the benefit of being a scrappy quilter!

And Janet, the sauerkraut and pork in the crock pot sounds yummy!

Over here it was my doctored up baked beans in the crock pot and we took them mid-afternoon to our friend’s house for burgers on the grill, all the fixin’s, and a long hysterical game of Mexican Train dominos…with a dessert of brownies and ice cream midway through.

Done and ready for aqua/turquoise!

I had a few hours yesterday while the beans were simmering away to sit at my machine and finish up the eleventy-million yellow strings.

Everything is wonder-clipped in batches of 10 to help me keep count.

You know what that means? This is up next:

All of your gifted strings!

I am sure the mail delivery person is tired of me by now. LOL!!

I can’t thank you all enough for the wonderful gift you’ve given me through this holiday season. Who knew there were so many beautiful and different aquas out there?

The best part has been the stories that came with them. Many envelopes contained long hand-written letters giving me a glimpse into your lives and the stories behind the fabrics you have included.

It was WONDERFUL to read each and every word.

Truly, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your fabric scraps with me. I’m sure there will be many more quilts with aqua in them. Like – till I die. LOL!

I can’t wait to start adding these onto my units. When these strips are on and the foundations are covered I can finally start to trim things up. There WILL be a new rotary blade before I begin.

Every once in a while I get comments like this, and I’m unsure of how to respond to them because the poster is “Unknown.”

Sometimes the comment comes and I want to answer it, but unsure that the commenter will even see my response unless they go back to that post and see if there has been a reply.

I’m going to try to bring these comments forward in the next day’s post and hopefully answers will be seen, also beneficial to others.

If I could talk about the one thing that really touched my soul with my trip to Poland, it was how HONEST the Polish people are about the treatment of Jews through their history. They own it. All of our tours – our guides – knew their history through and through and didn’t sugarcoat anything.

History needs to be taught in full, whether it makes us uncomfortable or not. Anytime we feel discomfort, it is an opportunity for growth, and not to be shied away from.

There are many monuments and areas around Krakow bearing witness to atrocities that happened there. Now the ghetto area in Krakow is thriving with artisans and independently owned restaurants and businesses and is a destination, all the while keeping the history of the Jewish ghetto and things that happened alive, and not relegated to the annals of history.

Our visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau can’t be described as a “highlight.” But I can say it was a refiner’s fire for my soul.

Remember, things that are uncomfortable to see, uncomfortable to talk about are an opportunity to GROW.

I’ve wanted to share these photos since my trip to Poland in September of 2023, but how do you put this into words? You can’t. I haven’t been able to. Mostly because it is something you feel that you can’t describe.

I’ve been to Dachau twice in Germany. Same thing there. Can’t find words, only sorrow. Yet, we have to bear witness so that this NEVER happens again to any group of people. And yes, I know there are other genocides happening in other countries right now. One isn’t any worse or better than any other. It just shows us that we have not learned as human beings how precious each life is.

Our Polish guide giving us accurate, honest history of this place. I won’t include it here. Watch a documentary, do something to research. And imagine if this was YOUR family. Your loved ones.

Between 1941 and December 1944, the official date of the closing of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, the transport/arrival timetable was 1.5 trains per day: 50 freight cars per train × 50 prisoners per freight car × 1,066 days = 4,000,000 prisoners in total.

It was here along the train tracks that I picked up a few rocks to place on the monuments just ahead.

See the little rocks in the bottom left corner?

I didn’t have fresh flowers with me, but I could place pebbles.

One rock from the train tracks came home with me.

It sits on my bedside table. I see it every morning, and every night. When I am worried and stressed I pick it up and hold its weight in my hands and I remember.

Nothing I have to face in life is as dire as this history was. Nothing.

And once you are aware, it changes you. It changed me. It continues to change me. Because things that make us feel uncomfortable also cause us to deeply question and allow us the opportunity to grow.

I left Poland and headed directly to meet up with another Craftours group in Italy. And that rock was in my suitcase.

Once in Rome, I learned from our Italian guide that Pope Paul IV had imprisoned Jews in the Jewish ghetto since 1555. The ghetto of Rome was controlled by the papacy of the Catholic church for over 300 years??

At the dawn of the October 16, 1943 the Nazis
surrounded the Jewish ghetto neighborhood in Rome and captured over 1,000 Jewish people by
force from their homes. Two days later the prisoners were loaded
onto a train bound for Auschwitz. Of the 1,023 deportees only 16
survived extermination.

So yes, my Polish trip and the Rome trip were very much connected, but I didn’t know it when I first embarked on it.

We can learn from HARD THINGS! We can do better than people did in the past.

In 2025 – can we do better? I am hoping so.

We cannot repeat past atrocities. When we know better, we can do better.