Sharing fabric cuttings with my worldwide friends

Friday, September 19, 2014

Where Poppies Grow in August


  The block for August is Winged Square and the story that went with it, on the Remembering Almo project, is about the US Field Hospital unit 3 crossing firstly the Moselle River and then the Rhine River. That unit was the first US unit of troops to ever cross the Rhine and it happened on December 11, 1918.


For this block there was a very big challenge with all those tiny squares. There was a fabric sitting patiently waiting to be used and when I measured that flower motif and it fit those tiny squares I decided to go for it and use it. The stripe fabric was also carefully cut and in some areas reminds me of shoulder epaulettes.

Since beginning this project I have been doing some reading about life in the trenches and it was very grim. Many lives were lost, not because of direct wounding by the enemy but by troops succumbing  to typhoid, complications from diarrhea and dysentry and poor diet and living conditions. 

Indeed, in the research done by my sister she comments that Grandpop spent 227 days out sick of the 260 days the ANZACs spent on Gallipoli and this likely saved his life. The last two weeks of August 1915 saw the 8th Company involved in the battle for Hill 60 but by the end of August Grandpop had contracted enteric fever (typhoid) and was evacuated to Malta on September 4, less than a month after his return to Gallipoli.

We now have eight out of the twelve blocks completed for the project. It is time to get serious about creating the setting blocks for I have decided to set my blocks in a style different than the one used by the designer of this Remembering Almo project.

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