June 17th

 

Going for a bike ride in the afternoon I saw this solitary rape flower in the field...

On June 17, 1953, an uprising took place in the Eastern part of then-separated Germany, people went on strike and protested against the regime, unfulfillable raising of quotas of production, political conditions. At least 50 people died when Russian troops intervened. (Find historical notes in English here. Find historical notes in German here.)

Subsequently, June 17^th was declared a National Holiday in the West, called “Day of German Unity”. It was scratched from the list of holidays when German reunification took place in 1990, and October 3^rd became the new National Holiday.

In a way, the events of June 17, 1953, influenced my family’s history.  Shortly afterwards a brief period of family reunifications began and my grandmother and her two younger daughters (one of them would become my mother) could legally leave the GDR to join my grandfather, who had left the country by swimming through a small river after he had been told that Russian authority were planning to arrest him. Without that uprising, who knows what would have happened?

As the day came and went this year I read several newspaper commentaries on the fact that Germany currently does not have a Memorial Day for victims of GDR-rule, and only this year a first (temporary) memorial was created in Berlin. The history of Germany as a divided country is still very present in my mind due to the fact that my mother’s eldest sister stayed behind because she was already married when her mother and sisters left, and her husband thought he could not leave the small business he had taken over from his parents – only to be disappropriated a few years later. I always thought it would have been rather appropriate to keep June 17^th as a national holiday. Or choose November 8 or 9 as a day of national remembrance, because so many historical events took place on that day, it would have made much more sense than taking October 3^rd.

After the last couple of rather emotional weeks and a lot of work I have gone to be with my husband for a few days and could use the not-anymore-holiday as a quiet day. Yesterday and the day before I had finally sat down to work on my newest piece for the next 20 Perspectives challenge. The topic is “3D”, which is not my piece of cake at all, but I just had to go along with the group’s decision. Which resulted in me putting it off for much longer than was wise, except for a little bit of planning a few weeks ago.

 

Using denim – which I never expected to be doing in quilts – I am working on an appropriated version of Henri Matisse’s “Blue Nude”. Attaching the denim bits on the background fabric was relatively quick and easy.

 

Now I wonder why I had the idea to use seed stitch for the entire background…

 

 Listening to an audio book, sitting on the balcony and enjoying the sunshine time passed pleasantly enough, and I already got a lot of the stitching done.

Fortunately, reveal date was pushed back by 2 weeks, so I will be relatively close to finishing, I hope, by the time that date rolls around.