The 70,237 Project. I had no idea.

The 70,237 project was started by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers.  I encourage you to go to her site and read about this project.  Below is an excerpt (italics).  When you go to her site and look around you will see people all across the world participating.  You will see that these quilts get shown all across the world.  Just glance through all the blog posts.

For some reason with all the craziness going on in our world today, this project struck me as something I needed to do.  Being that quilters are some of the most generous people I know, I wanted to share in case there might be even one more person out there who would like to participate.  On October 14th (see Global Block day Below), Haley and I will make a few more blocks and send them in.

block partyThey are having A #GLOBALBLOCKDAY on October 14th.  The last blog post I read had between 20k and 30k completed.  There is still a lot to be done.

It won’t take much of your time.  I made the 5 above in less than about 45 minutes from scraps.

We (The 70,237 project) are gathering 70,273 blocks of fabric, marked with two red crosses to commemorate the number of physically and mentally disabled men, women and children who were murdered between January 1940 and August 1941 in the Aktion T4 Programme – a largely unrecognized atrocity.  

The two red crosses represent the marks made by the assessing Doctors as to whether the person was deemed ‘unfit’ or an economic burden on Nazi society. It is such a simple symbol, and in this project, the simplicity with which someone could sign someone’s life away is turned into a symbol of love and strength. The white fabric represents the medical records – the only information assessing physicians used in making their life-and-death determinations. Seeing the crosses stitched together sends a powerful message of tolerance, community and love. Its impact comes from the huge variety of these two red marks – each beautiful in their own perfectly imperfect way.
The blocks will be stitched into quilts and wall hangings and will be displayed in Rochester, Lincoln and Durham Cathedrals during January 2018, to mark National Holocaust Memorial Day. After that, these quilts will join others made around the world to appear in exhibits near and far. 

Happy Sewing

Happy Quilting

#GLOBALBLOCKDAY

 

19 thoughts on “The 70,237 Project. I had no idea.”

  3. Hi Lori! I was interested to see your post. Jeanne lives near me and I have been trying for months to interview her for my blog, but we’ve both been too busy to get together! I’m glad you managed to post.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  8. Lori, thank you SO much for this good blog post. We have many people to commemorate – and of course we won’t stop till every single one of them has been commemorated – and I am thanking you and thanking you big for not only stitching commemorations, but for telling others about what we’re doing. (I’m also adding a link to this post to the Clarions page on the web site, if that’s okay with you.)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment