Let's Revisit the Diary Quilt....

I've not made any new progress on the Comic Strip Quilt, as I've been neck-deep in helping my oldest son study for his final exams, and juggling the other boys while the oldest takes said exams, and just in general busy with life.  Such is the way it goes, as I'm sure most of you can understand. A home school mom, even one now delegating the school part to an on-line entity, is often too busy to sit down and focus, intently, on her hobbies.

Rather than let the blog stagnate while I do that, though, I thought I'd return to posting about my Diary Quilt. This is one of the very first projects I started when I decided to quilt, and it's deeply personal and very meaningful to me. Since I'm also a blogger, of course I'm sharing all those very personal stories with you.

I've created a Blog Page dedicated to the Diary Quilt, and I hope you'll take time to visit, see the links to the story behind each block, learn all about me, and see the quilt. Well, the pieces of the quilt, because it is still just a stack of blocks, waiting to be sashed and put together. After the Comic Strip Quilt. Really.

Diary Quilt Blog Page

If you do visit the page, you'll see I still have some stories to tell; today I will tell the story of the Trip Around the World block. Yes, taking them out of order, but that's because I've not yet emailed the honorees of the Ohio Star with their story, so I can't post it on the blog. My blog, my quilt, my rules. ;)

Trip Around the World block
center is 6" square, and hand pieced
setting triangles were added by machine
black fabric will be the sashing, eventually

When I was choosing blocks for the quilt, I saw the Trip Around the World block and new it had to go in. Not for the looks, but the name. As a Texan living in S. America, and having journeyed all around the United States as a child (thanks to a rather nomadic father), and with dreams of more travel in my future......yes, I've been on a trip around the world.

Some places I've only seen in books so far, either in my own leisure reading (which is plentiful) or via the wealth of home school books I've read, and re-read, to my boys over the years. We used a curriculum for our history studies that did a wonderful job of teaching children, and their parents, about the entire world, not just the Western Hemisphere. In our school reading we've visited Ireland, ancient cultures, modern day India, several places in Africa, Asia, Europe.....the world. I hope one day we can visit some of these places for real, see them, taste their foods, hear the sounds, meet the people.

Here in Brazil, we've visited much of the country, from the beaches of Sao Paulo, to the North East Coast, to the Amazon Rain Forest. Travel. Experience. Journeying along, together, from one place to the next.

Praia Setiba

Ilha Grande

Meeting of the Waters, the Amazon

my family & I, in Rio de Janeiro

a beach in the Nordeste, I forget which one

I love the memories this block brings, of trips with my family to so many different places. More than that, I love the hope it brings, of trips we'll take in the future.  No, my traveling days are not over yet. Not by a long shot.