Looks like this blue and white double four-patch ain't gonna be done this month. I decided to machine tack it using the eyelet decorative stitch on the machine. It's coming along but it won't be bound by the 28th. I'm going to blame it on the short month. LOL! I am having a problem with the eyelet stitch sometimes not being perfectly round on all of them, but I'm not going to obsess over it or do something insane like rip them out and do them over again. I've tried different things to make it stop doing that but it's intermittent. I thought at first that it was the quilt being too taught under the foot and bunched it up and pulled the quilt up around the machine but that wasn't it. I also increased the foot pressure but that didn't help. So I'm just dealing with it. I've decided to use a pillow ticking binding on it, (blue and white) to go with the blue denim and white muslin I've used in the quilt.

A friend did this for her mother - Made appliqued handprints on a cushion cover, embroidered child's name and age on each and the year. The hands formed a ring....two of the kids were twins, and then the baby's hands were interspaced so it formed a circle. It was done in red with Christmas print hands .....each hand was different fabric. At the bottom was a wide ribbon just stitched on...so think a handwreath and bow idea. I hope this makes sense, the result was very nice and sits on my friends bed.

DISCLAIMER: Be advised that these statements are the views of one person who is NOT an expert in the field of child behavior. These are opinions only. Autism is tough to deal with. I've been though this myself with my first born. Back when he came down with the 'troubles', not as much was known about autism and related diseases. We now beleive that he was mis-labeled because he did finally improve, and true autistics are not supposed to get better according to the profession, but now they find that it is not all black and white, but many shades of gray. There is no set formula for diagnosis. For this reason, doctors are reluctant to hang the label "autistic" too early on a child. And for these reason, early diagnosis is difficult. I can only offer clues based on my experience: 1. Infants will seek out an adult's face when they are nursing. In the first month or so, it is the mother's face because this is the one in focus. (Infants are born near sighted; focusing at a distance develops in the first few months.) After a month or more, a babe may look at the father or another adult when he is nursing. It will the face he can easily see while nursing. Anthropologists say this may be an inborn trait. A babe is most vulnerable when feeding and watches the face of a protective adult for signs of distress or danger. This trait is missing with autism. 2. The second trait is that many babies like to hear their parent hum a tune to relax them and help to settle down for a sleep. The autisitc babe bristles at any such attempt. However, if you have ever heard me hum a lulaby, you might bristle too, so I can not declare this trait as a proof. 3. The fear of heights and/or danger is missing. An example was if I was walking with my son in my arms and passed a stairwell, he'd lunge for the open stairwell. 4. The most telling trait happens at about 18 months when speech is developing. The child will begin to parrot several words, but in a few days, a new word will begin to be slurred and in a few days, it will become unintelligble. As the malady progresses, the time shortens from saying a new word to shoveling it into meaningless sounds. The time of frustration begins for both the parent and child. The child grunts a phrase and expects the parent to understand, and the parent becomes baffled bordering on the verge of anger. Both child and parent become angry internally. This is the period that requires great patience from the parent. This the period when the parent-child relationship can be damaged. There are other traits of autism that show when the disease is fully developed and these are fully described in the literature. Typical behaviors are 'twiddling', obsession with a repeated action, staring at an inanimate object, etc. I recommend that you toss out literature about popular ideas written from 1940 to maybe 1975. There was a turn-about in ideas at the end of this period therefore later findings were more helpful and accurate than the first publication. The first clinical diagnosis was based on a study of too few subjects and the subjects were not representative of the cross section of our population. It was a very skewed population of few affected children. A failed relationship between mother and child was blamed, and as a result, many mothers were wrongly blamed. This worsened the situation and tore families apart. Sadly, some mothers eventually were pushed into believeing they were 'bad'. There could have been a bad apple here and there, but that was a very small percentage. Because of this, I recommed that you stick with literature generated in the last 30 years and be aware that old ideas, particularily ideas saturated with finding blame, dies hard. Those old idea tended to color literature for a long after it was declared void. DISCLAIMER: Be advised that these statements are the views of one person who is NOT an expert in the field of child behavior. These are opinions only.

Sounds adorable...my opinion, one yellow W on the front, lower right would be cute! As for quilting, the W would show if you outline just one W, and do something different on the rest of the top, a meander perhaps. could you post a pic...might help with inspiration ;-) There are more experienced quilters in the forum who may offer other ideas. Have fun... V.