This quilt was inspired by the novel The Paris Architect which is set in Nazi-occupied Paris. Although the children in the novel escaped the Nazis, I found it impossible not to think about the 1.5 million children who did not. When I was in grad school I studied in Poland for a semester and visited the Majdanek concentration camp. All of my memories are in shades of gray - the barracks were dark and windowless. Each building we entered contained huge piles of one thing - one was full of eye glasses, another had shoes. In the children's barracks, they had scratched drawings of butterflies into the walls. This quilt commemorates their spirit.