My Black Friday frenzy

On this glorious weekend of socially encouraged consumer excess, it has been my particular pleasure to open a box of leftovers from my old friend Juanita Yeager.  Why brave the snow and the crowds for 3 AM store openings when you can just rip open a box of fabric and paw through it in search of delicious bargains!

Juanita knows of my legendary love of other people's scraps, and every now and then bundles up a care package for me.  Her scraps are like other people's shopping bags, with lots of big pieces, and her color sense is wonderful, but even better, she throws in partially completed projects that struck her fancy but then unstruck.

I was thrilled to unpack a bunch of quilt blocks, already completed, that will sew up into a nice big baby quilt for a baby arriving in January.  If I were feeling ambitious I could sew additional blocks from the many, many, many pre-cut centers and strips found in the box, enough for that baby's king-size wedding quilt, but it would probably take me just about that long to finish it. 

And a bunch of free-form log cabin blocks, plus enough pre-cut strips for a lot more.  Those could become a sample for my book on improvisational log cabins, the book I wrote a couple of years ago but haven't yet figured out how to get published. 

And best of all, I found a small bunch of black and white scraps that have already become a newborn quilt for said baby.  I have written before, in regards to said baby's cousins, that newborns need little black and white quilts in the first few months of their lives, because they can't see colors at first.  But give tiny babies something in black and white, and they will "read" them intently, paying attention for long periods of time. 

The best part of newborn quilts: they are tiny, to match the baby!  This one took less than a day's work, spread over the holiday weekend.  And after the baby has outgrown the quilt, it will serve for a doll bed or a dresser scarf.