"100 Good Wishes Quilt"

The past few days I have been working on sending my letters & emails out to my friends and family inviting them to help with my "100 Good Wishes Quilt". I'm also searching around trying to figure out what pattern I want to use for my quilt. I have came across this one of the bear, and absolutley love it!!! If anyone has a pattern for it let me know.

“100 Good Wishes Quilt”

Dear Family and Friends: As many of you are aware, I have begun the process to adopt a baby girl from China. While I’m waiting for the arrival of my daughter, I’m working on a project which I need your assistance. I’m creating a "100 Good Wishes Quilt.” To welcome and celebrate a new life, there is a tradition in China to make a Bai Jia Bei, or "100 Good Wishes Quilt." It is a custom to invite 100 people to contribute a single square patch of cloth. The 100 patches are sewn together into a quilt that contains the luck, energy, and good wishes from all the family and friends who contributed a piece of fabric. The quilt is then passed down from generation to generation. I love the idea of welcoming my daughter into my home with a quilt that represents the good wishes for her from our family and friends.

HERE IS WHAT I WOULD LIKE YOU TO DO: 1. Choose any 100% cotton fabric or flannel that you like. 2. Cut one (1) 8"x8” square from the fabric. 3. On a 4x6 or 5x7 paper or cardstock put a small piece of the fabric and include your "good wish note." Please remember to sign your wish and include your relation to the child (if family), city and date. The fabric will be used to make a quilt, and the notes will be placed in a “good wish” scrapbook, which I will give to my daughter when she is older.

IDEAS FOR SELECTING FABRIC SQUARES:I would love to keep with a Chinese theme quilt, so ladybugs, pandas, Chinese children, Chinese patterns, or whatever is meaningful to you would be great. Ladybugs are a sign of good luck in the Chinese adoption community. It is said if you see ladybugs that good things will happen soon! If there are several members in your family, please feel free to send more than one good wish note and pieces of fabric.

IDEAS FOR GOOD WISHES NOTE: This is the fun part. Send a decorated page or plain note (no bigger than 10 inches) with a good wish for my daughter and a scrap of your fabric glued to the paper. Your wish can be simple or elaborate. Some ideas are good health, perseverance, compassion, love, or a poem. These wishes with your small piece of fabric will be placed in a scrapbook. When my daughter is older she will be able to match up the wishes and fabrics to her quilt. The quilt will also give my daughter some history. She will know that while she was in a Chinese orphanage, many people thought of her.

It would be great to get the fabric and good wishes by July 15th so the quilt can be completed before I bring my baby home. The quilt is being designed and assembled for me by my very dear friend Randee.

Thank you so much for helping me make this very special keepsake for my daughter. The miracle of this adoption has been helped and nurtured by so many of you and this will be so incredibly meaningful for me as well as my daughter!! I cant wait to have my daughter home so she can be wrapped in her “100 Good Wishes Quilt”.

If any of my "blogger friends" want to send a square & good wish just let me know and I will send you my address.