“In China, when a baby is due, friends and family offer swatches of cloth and good wishes to the new mother so she can sew a “100 Good Wishes” quilt. The red thread used to stitch it is a traditional symbol of the connection between those destined to be together. Adoptive parents from the United States have embraced this tradition, which busies their hands with a project and soothes their hearts while they wait.” (From Waiting For May by Janet Morgan Stoeke)
About a month ago, I decided I wanted to make a quilt to take with us to China for Calli. I had read about this Chinese tradition, so I decided to make one of these for her. Here is the email we sent to our family:
To our family:
We need your help with a project we are working on for Calli Faith. We would like to create a traditional Chinese “Bai Jia Bei,” or 100 Good Wishes quilt to take with us to China when we pick her up. Our hope is that this blanket will be something she can attach to, feel secure with, and in the long run she will come to understand that it is made up of fabric given by members of her new family who love her and have prayed for her for a long time!
So if you would like to, please send us a swatch of fabric along with a short note to Calli or prayer for her written on an index card size of paper. We will cut some of the fabric to include in the quilt and then we will attach a small part of the fabric to the card and create a book for her showing where all the pieces of her quilt have come from. The fabric can be something that has been meaningful to you, us, or our family, or it can be just something you like!
The catch is that we would love to take this with us when we travel to China, hopefully in early April. So we need to begin collecting all the swatches and notes soon. If you would like to mail it to us, you are welcome to do that, or we will be in Ft. Worth the weekend of March 15th, and if you can get them to Alisa, Anita, or Lisa before then, we’ll be seeing them that weekend and can get them then. Thank you so much for helping us with this! We are excited to bring Calli home to her new family and teach her all about the history and legacy of our sweet families. We love you!
We started to receive scraps of fabric from all our family members. It was so fun to see what everyone sent and to read the notes they wrote.
Once we had all the squares cut, we laid them out to start arranging them.
I included some fabric from my wedding dress...
We love the way it looks! And each piece is special to us. My plan is to put a separate scrap of each fabric next to the note for Calli from whoever sent that piece into a book. Then she will know where each one came from and be able to always read the notes from her new family! There are pieces in the quilt from all our parents, all three sisters, Gracie, Evy and Oliver, all four of our grandmothers, Randy's papaw, Randy's aunts Brenda and Kathy, my aunt Donna, Michelle, and my Great Aunt Doris. My granny sent tons of scraps from clothes she and mom made for Alden and me when we were younger. Lindsey helped me get started and let me use some of her fabric, so there are a couple of pieces from her quilting stash that I loved. Then, Kendall, Cooper and I went and picked out some new fabrics that we loved to represent Calli's new home with us. The girls also helped me pick out the backing, a soft pink flannel.
So, this was my very first quilt. I have never made one before! I even had to relearn how to use a sewing machine. Growing up, I used to sew with my Granny in the summers on her machine, but I haven't touched one since probably middle school. I had a lot of fun relearning how to sew and also learning for the first time how to quilt!
The girls had fun "helping" me along the way, too. And on Monday, two days before we left for China, I finished! Here is the finished product. I can't wait to wrap Calli up in it and snuggle with her! Tomorrow!!
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