quilt letter

To our wonderful family and friends,
As many of you know, we are adopting a baby girl from China. After months of chasing paper, our dossier is complete and now in China. We hope to have our referral for our baby girl in 2007. We have decided to name her Sophia.

We are creating a 100 wishes quilt to give to our daughter when we bring her home from China. We would love good wishes and/or prayers to be included.

To welcome and celebrate a new life, a tradition exists in the Northern part of China, to make a bai jia bei (100 wishes quilt) to welcome and celebrate a new life. It is custom that the family and friends contribute squares of cloth along with their wish for the baby. The quilt is then passed on from generation to generation.

How to contribute: There are two pieces to contribute

#1 Fabric: Choose a machine washable, 100% cotton fabric. It can be new or used/meaningful. Cut an 12X12 square. We are hoping to get lots of bright colors

#2 Wish/Prayer: This is the fun part! Use an index card and glue a one inch scrap of your fabric to it with your wish for our precious Sophia. Your wish can be simple or elaborate, handwritten or typed. It can be something you wrote, a favorite poem, bible verse or quote. You can even place a picture on it if you wish! Please remember to include your name on it. These wishes/prayers will be put into a album for our little girl to cherish forever.


All of the notes will be put into an album and when we look through it we will be able to match up the wish and the fabric on the quilt.

If you have more than one person in your family who would like to participate, PLEASE feel free to send more than one quilt block and prayer/wish. Remember, we need to collect 100 squares, so the more the better. Children are welcome to be contributors to this project!

We know that you all have busy schedules, but we hope you will be able to help us create this special keepsake to help preserve some of the Chinese culture for our daughter. This will be so incredibly meaningful to us as well as to Sophia as she gets older.
Love always,
Adam, Lisa, Savannah, Tyler and Brayden Hopp