Creative Nudge – Hearts and Good Wishes

Last week while I was at the Not
Fade Away conference, someone asked me if we had received a 100
Good Wishes Quilt ("Bai-Jia-Bei") while we were waiting for
Sophie's adoption. This is a Northern Chinese
tradition of friends and family contributing 100 squares of special fabric
(each with a prayer attached) to be made into a Welcome Quilt for the baby. The
quilt is meant to bring good luck, health and positive energy to the baby who
will be wrapped in the special quilt, and the quilt becomes a future family heirloom.

Rummaging around in my photo files this week, I came across this photo of
Sophie just a couple days after we came home from China. She has TWO special
quilts in this photo, and I thought you might like to know the story.

I belong to a private small quilt list that formed many years ago because we
were tired of mean nasty people flaming on some other lists. Life is too short
to waste time on people who are bullies or curmudgeons online. I joined this
list 15 years ago, because one of the rules was that nobody was allowed to say
anything mean to another member on the list. That's my kind of quilt list!

Anyway, unbeknownst to me, while we waited for the adoption to go through, my
online friends (who I had never met in person at that time) all contributed a
block and made us their own version of a Good Wishes Quilt. In this photo,
Sophie is sleeping on this quilt, which is so full of love and kindness.

The quilt on top of Sophie was originally given to me at a baby shower when I
was pregnant with Mason. (24 years ago) As soon as we were matched with a baby
in early 2003, and could send a care package to her in China, I wrote her Chinese
name in Sharpie on this Hearts quilt, and shipped
it off to the orphanage in China.

Two
months later when they put Sophie into my arms for the very first time, she
was wrapped in this Hearts quilt. So in this photo she is sandwiched between
these two very special quilts.

I think the Hearts quilt was the first seed that was planted, on my journey to
become a quilter.

So you never know, when you give the gift of a quilt, what might unfold in the
years to come…