A 100 Good Wishes Quilt

Dear Family and Friends,

As many of you know, we are adopting two deaf children from Ethiopia. After months of collecting paperwork, and trying to have patience, waiting for Lisa's confirmed date of travel, we have decided to work on a project with which we need your assistance.

We 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 we would like to have a quilt for our son, Milan and our daughter, Amira. We are hoping that it will be a keepsake for them as their "birthstory in our hearts" unfolds...

Here’s what you need to do to participate: (Please do one separately for each child so they may both have their own special book and quilt)

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

2. 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. Write your wish for him/her on a post card or card stock. Your wish can be anything - your hopes for her/him, thoughts on the adoption, a poem, prayer, quote, verse, favorite saying, advice or anything meaningful to you. Decorate it too!

The good wish with the small swatch of your fabric will be incorporated into a special “Good Wishes” memory book - one for Milan and one for Amira. 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 we need to get to 100 wishes per child so the more the better!

Children are welcome to contribute to this project! We know you all have very busy schedules, but we hope you will be able to help us create this special keepsake. This will be incredibly meaningful to us as well as to our children as they get older, especially since we don't have baby pictures to share with our children. We will always have this quilt and show them how much they are loved and wanted.

Thank you so much for being a part of our dreams coming true,

Lisa and Jonathan Chuinard Hepner

Here are examples of 100 Good Wishes Quilt contributions:

http://annagracecomeshomequilt.blogspot.com/ (click on this link)