Nora's quilt - update

I don't think that I've mentioned before my apprehension about the quilt project (at least not on this blog, if you know me you've probably heard it!). When we first started this process, I threw myself whole-heartedly into the experience. Anything that I heard we should do, I did because I didn't want Nora to miss out on anything. After a while though, I came to suspect that some of these supposed Chinese traditions were less rooted in Chinese culture and more a creation of the adoption community.

The quilt I regard a little bit differently - I think it's a great idea and I love having a little reminder of all the friends and family who care about Nora and are wishing her well. Some of them, like my Uncle Buck and Rob's Grandma Violet, have already passed on, so those are extra-special mementos of people that Nora will never know. I always intended to complete this project, but I didn't want to tell Nora that it was Chinese custom unless it really was. So, I braced myself for the cold, hard truth about the quilt and sent the question to a friend of Rob's who is Chinese by both birth and residence. Guess what? It's REAL! Here's his response:

I have consulted some classmates and some aged people in China, "Bai jiabei" (百家被 in Chinese) is something used to be popular in some areas in China, and maybe still popular in some places. The word "Bai jia" (百家)means a hundred families, "bei" means quilt, it was usually made by every family in the village when a baby was given to birth, and later it's simplified to be just several women in the village to make such thing.Another saying about this is that this thing was made by pieces of cloth that come from every family in the village. Whatever, people can express their love in this kind of ways to the baby...

And, more good quilt news ... tonight I finished my last block! I still need to assemble the squares, finish the last partial rows on the bottom and side and add my borders, but you can get a really good feel for how it's going to look. This will be a twin size quilt. I've decided to have it quilted at the shop we visited up at the North Shore, so I need to have it ready to go before our Fall vacation.

Next post I'll tell you more about another Chinese tradition that Jasper told me about.