More Precious Than Gold, Worth More Than All the Tea in China

After the birth of my third grandson, I started campaigning--hard--for a girl baby. We were so lucky to have the babes we had but there were not going to be any more. So why not go to China and get one of those girl babies, they were giving them away!!

I found a little silk outfit and bought it and kept it in the closet-until we needed it.
When our quilting group celebrated our twentieth anniversary, the year of china, we offered a challenge to make a quilt with China as the theme. This quilt was just waiting to be made.

The jacket, vest and hat were appliqued onto a piece of ikea fabric that I quilted in a grid fashion.


Then I made the Chinese coins segment. Its a traditional quilt block. I uses fabrics that had a bit of gold printing.

Then I made several blocks from Kaffe Fassetts book. They are rice cups to Kaffe, but I wanted tea cups.

And that is how the quilt got its name.

More Precious than Gold, Worth More than All the Tea in China.

As I was making the quilt, I thought a lot about the whole idea of giving all of these little girls away. Just because they were girls. I am the mother of two girls. How do you just give her away. How does a country sanction, even force this to happen. Do they long for their long lost daughters?

I have no idea how many daughters were removed from the country, but I am sure that it changed the face of the country.

There are just so many issues on the whole adoption theme. The giving and the getting changes lives forever.

I know that the life of the girls was changed-and I am sure that it was for the better. A life in a new family, who cherished them, with all of the opportunities in North America is surely better than where they would have been if they had remained in China.

I didn't get the girl baby. But I did get three beautiful grandboys. I am over it.

How lucky can one woman be!!