Five in a Row

Five in a row is the number of quilt tops I hope to complete in the next couple of weeks!!

One quilt is a Sunbonnet Sue for a lady whose grandmother made the blocks. I've sashed it with '30's orange and bleached muslin and added a '30's orange print border. The rows are assembled; I have only to sew the rows together and add the borders and it will be a finish! (Photo at the bottom)

Five in a Row (FIAR) is also a curriculum that I used to homeschool my children when they were younger. FIAR uses picture books to teach children all kinds of things....From the classic children's book, The Story About Ping, for example, you can launch discussion and exploration about the Yangtse River and Japan and ducks and cormorants and boats, and do experiments to figure out why ducks don't get wet when they swim....It's just the coolest way to learn EVER :-) -- and my children loved it.

I'm working on three quilt tops for a FIAR family that lost their mom to breast cancer. The gals on the FIAR message board wanted to do something special for the family, so they sent quilt blocks to a friend who lives near me. As Providence would have it, I met Christy through a yard sale (selling books that my children had outgrown!), and she asked me if I knew anyone who quilted. LOL "Come into my house," said the spider to the fly! :-D

Christy brought me the blocks and I've started auditioning fabrics for sashing and borders. I'm going to keep the assembly simple -- because the blocks are what is phenomenal about these quilts. For both the little girls who lost their mom, the blocks represent the different picture books they studied with their mom doing FIAR.

 

So there's Ping (his block background has little Japanese characters in it!), and Madeline, and The Very Last First Time -- a story about an Inuit child who goes under the ice in the arctic for the first time! -- and The Salamander Room, and so many other classic and beautiful children's books.

There are also blocks for the dear lady's husband a quilt. Within it are expressions of love and commitment and encouragement.

One of the two little girls is adopted -- a beautiful picture of the love of this family.

Adoption is one of God's best illustrations of His love for us. Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus about God choosing us! Choosing us!!!

"For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will -- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves." (Ephesians 1:4-6)

1 Peter 2: 9 goes into even more detail: "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light."

The center of one of the quilts says, "Emma, Momma's Little Princess." We are "royal," Peter tells us! We are God's princes and princesses!! The center of the other quilt says, "Eden, Momma's Chosen Girl." We, too, are chosen by God. The dad's quilt calls him "Beloved." We are the beloved of Father God, Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. Glorious grace, indeed!

The fifth quilt is a t-shirt quilt for a local girl who graduated high school last spring. And I'm still working on the Circuit Rider, enjoying making progress on it so I can freely move on to other projects. So much to do.

So much easier to do it knowing I am chosen, royal, beloved.

Blessings!