“You and I meet at various quilt shows. I’ve bought most of your books because I just love the simplicity that you offer without it being silly looking. I had asked you at the Delta Quilters quilt show (one of my guilds) if it was all right to use the patterns in the Growing Hearts book with my appliqué group in Fairfield to make a quilt for donation. You said it was all right as long as I put the name of the book and author on the label, which I did.

This quilt was made by the members of the D’Vine Applique Society in Fairfield, California. We chose the blocks from your Growing Hearts to Applique book and each member hand appliquéd their block during our monthly meeting. It took about a year to complete and we are really pleased with the finished product. We hope you are too.”

Are you kidding me Cynthia? Am I pleased with it, seriously? I’m over the moon! I can’t believe the fabulous job you did, and for such an important cause.

The quilt is named “Hearts of Joy.” It was made for The Breast Cancer Quilt Auction, a community-service project to raise funds for Sutter Cancer Center’s breast cancer research and patient treatment programs. The auction takes place Saturday, November 5, 2011, at Sutter Cancer Center, 2800 L Street, Sacramento, CA 95816.

“Hearts of Joy” is 70” x 70” and also can be seen as quilt # 537 on the Sutter Medical Center Foundation Philanthropy auction site.

Cynthia continues, “We all got together and selected the backgrounds and border fabrics. We followed the idea that was on the cover of the book with four different off-whites and different brown/tan colors for the sashing, etc. Sometimes it amazes me how so many women can actually agree on so many choices. But we did in short order. We also all agreed on having certain fabrics carried throughout the blocks. These were all scraps that were brought to the meeting and shared.

The real work actually began with the preparation, and then there was a lot of concentration as you can see from the photos. I think it is fun to see the progression of a project in photos.”

Cynthia quilted the quilt on her longarm. She says, “I tried to quilt each block in a non-traditional way, such as the swing in the tree, the planter became a sailboat, and the ribbons being dropped by the bird as it is flying.”

Here’s the beautiful quliting that Cynthia did on opposing corners of the border.

Amazing.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you another part of our story,” Cynthia continues. “We were so bent on completing the quilt so it could be quilted on time for submission that we decided to forgo our annual Christmas celebration and work right on through. Instead we promised ourselves that when we completed the quilt we would treat ourselves to chocolate sundaes. And that is just what we did, the completion of the quilt made those sundaes taste ever so sweet.

The D’Vine Appliqué Society meets from 6:30to 8:30 p.m. on the first Tuesday of each month at the Cornerstone Quilt Shoppe in Fairfield. We have a very special group. Thank you for letting us use your patterns. We are hoping that this quilt earns a lot of money for the auction.”

I sure hope so too, and I have a feeling it will. Thank you so much for choosing my designs for your efforts.

Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

Janet does all her work by machine and has more than one form of machine appliqué up her sleeve. For this one she used fusible web and a small machine blanket stitch. The fine details were accomplished with freehand machine embroidery. This piece was quilted by Gail Belmont of Valley Springs, California.

After Janet made this quilt, her mother admired it so much that she wanted to make one just like it for herself. Janet rummaged through her stash and pulled out all of the fabrics that she still had any of, and sent them to mom. Mom’s quilt resembles the original so closely that you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart. The last time Janet and I had back-to-back booths at a quilt show, I hung her quilt and she hung her mother’s. Visitors who stood in front of the pole between us thought they were experiencing double vision. We had a lot of fun with that.

I hope you can see the chicken-wire fabric that Janet used as the background. Janet’s quilt design company is Hen Scratch Quilting. Can you tell she is fond of chickens and birds?

Until next time,
Kay

When I was working on Growing Hearts to Appliqué, Pam Crooks agreed to make an example. I was wowed with the result! I named her piece “Tropical Garden Hearts” because of the hot colors. This quilt appears as inspiration in Growing Hearts to Appliqué.

An avid appliquér, Pam has several methods in her bag of tricks. For this wall quilt, she traced around freezer-paper templates, cut out the pieces, then removed the templates. She placed the motifs by eye (wow), pinned everything on, and needle-turned. The stems were done the same way, using no special tool or gadget. My hat’s off to you, Pam!

Pam is known to use black backgrounds to splendid effect. Here, the black sets off the glowing colors beautifully. Pam lives in Soquel, California, and can never be found without an appliqué project or her extensive thread collection. You’ll see more of her work here in the future.

Until next time,
Kay