100 good wishes quilt

Dear Family and Friends,

As many of you know, I am adopting a baby girl from China. After months of collecting paperwork I have completed my dossier and it was sent to and approved in China on May 16th. Currently, the China Center of Adoption Affairs is taking approximately 10-14 months to match babies with their families. I hope to receive my referral and travel in early-mid 2007 and have requested to be matched with an infant girl as young as possible. I haven’t chosen her name yet, but will let you know when I do!

To keep busy during the wait, 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 pieces to the child's mother. She then makes a quilt for the baby from the fabric. It is said that the luck, energy and good wishes from all of the families and friends who contributed, surround the child when she is wrapped in the quilt. The quilt is then passed down from generation to generation. With your help I would like to honor this tradition from my daughter’s homeland.

Here’s what you need to do to participate:

1. Please choose any 100% cotton fabric that you like.

2. Pre-wash and cut an 8 x 8 square to be used for the quilt.

3. Also include a smaller piece of this fabric to be placed in a memory book with the good wish.

4. Hand write or type your wish for her on a post-card or card stock (acid-free is best for preservation purposes). Your wish can be anything - your hopes for her, thoughts on the adoption, a poem, prayer, quote, verse, favorite saying, advice or anything meaningful to you. Make sure to sign your name and the city and state where you live on the bottom.

The good wish with the small swatch of your fabric will be incorporated into a special “Good Wishes” memory book for my daughter. We will be able to track the fabric in the quilt to the good wish by placing the smaller scrap of fabric in the memory book with the good wish.

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 contribute to this project!

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 incredibly meaningful to me as well as to her as she gets older, especially since it incorporates a part of her Chinese heritage and will be pieced together by the creative and loving hands of her Aunt Tracy.

With warm regards,

Barb