100 Good Wishes Quilt

Dear Family and Friends, As many of you know, I am adopting a baby girl from China. After five months of chasing paper I have completed my dossier and it was sent to China on March 31st. Currently, the China Center of Adoption Affairs is taking approximately 10 months to match babies with their forever families. I hope to receive my referral and travel in early 2007 and have requested to be matched with an infant girl six months of age or as young as possible. English name until I see her. To keep busy while waiting, I have decided to work on a project with which I need your assistance. I would like to invite you to participate in creating a “Bai Jia Bei”, otherwise known as a “100 Good Wishes Quilt”. In parts of Northern China, when a baby is born, family and friends of the child donate fabric scraps from old clothing or other meaningful fabric to the child's mother. She then makes a quilt for the baby from the fabrics and welcomes her into life with it. It is said that the luck, energy and good wishes from all of the families and friends who contributed to it surrounds the child when she is wrapped in the quilt. The quilt is then passed down from generation to generation and is the tradition upon which the "100 Good Wishes Quilt" is modeled. With your help I would like to honor this tradition from my daughter’s homeland. Here’s what you need to do to participate. Please choose any 100% cotton fabric (not flannel) that you like. Choose a fabric that has some kind of meaning to you or merely something you like. HINT: Ladybugs are an adoption sign of luck and feel free to use any colors, prints including Asian prints 1. Pre-wash and iron (preferred but not required) and cut an 8 x 8 inch square. 2. Please write your wish for her on a 3x5 or 4x6 post-card or larger size card stock that is either hand written or typed. It can be anything, from your hopes for her, thoughts on the adoption, telling her how much she will be loved, a poem, verse, favorite saying, advice or anything meaningful to you. Make sure to sign you name, city and state on the bottom. 3. You also need to cut a 3x3 inch piece of the same fabric and attach it to your note so that we can match the wishes and author to the patches of the quilt. If you want to see a sample check out my blog at www.mychinajourney.blogspot.com The good wishes with the swatch of your fabric will be incorporated into a special “Good Wishes” memory book for my daughter to view when she is older. You can view a sample of this at http://www.mychinajourney.blogspot.com/ If you have more than one person in your family who would like to participate then please feel free to send more than one quilt block and wish. Remember I need to get to 100 wishes so the more the better. Children are welcome to be contributors to this project! Any fabric swatches in excess of 100 will be used to make a matching pillow. I know you all have very busy schedules, but I hope you will be able to help me create this special keepsake. This will be so incredibly meaningful to me as well as to her as she gets older, especially since it incorporates a part of her Chinese heritage. Love Always, Lisa