Despite the move, the work of the Healing Quilt Project — providing warming quilts for people who are ill and creating memorial quilts for those who have died — will continue in the Ozarks, said founder Rick McCormack.

The Healing Quilt Project of the Ozarks makes quilts and afghans, which are given away to hospices, hospitals and individuals. The quilts are individually designed with photos and other memories of the loved one they memorialize.

McCormack is in the San Francisco area to further his religious education, working toward ordination as a priest in his order.

For more information, a message can be left for McCormack at 576-4603.

(Editors Note: you can view quilt images and read Peggy’s story at Lily’s website)

Lily’s Story:

This quilt (design) really started with a poem. I had the idea of a garden quilt with paper pieced blocks and color/value changes defining foreground and background areas. After struggling to explain what I meant and some crude sketches (with no blocks designed yet), I finally gave up and wrote a poem to describe it. “My Ozark Garden”
A wash of sun and shadow,
the flutter of bright wings;
A riot of hosta and cascading geraniums
and tousled asters…
Monet would love it here!

These became the design theme of the quilt–hosta blocks for vertical emphasis, multi-sectioned geranium blocks, a variety of octagon Stack ‘n Whack type blocks for asters, and a variety of leaf blocks for foliage. Several hummingbird blocks were added were added and Peggy provided the rest of the “wings” in her quilting. But all that was almost a year away…

Well, I wasn’t that worried either, because I knew from my experience as an art teacher that the improvisational process I envisioned could work–but I didn’t know what the quilt would look like.

First came the task of designing blocks–which also meant determining size, format and value patterns as well as the block designs themselves. I used Corel Draw on my computer because it allowed me to resize and layer the patterns as I worked. Some of the blocks were complex, but taken one section at a time, they went together easily as I tested them.

Needless to say I learned a great deal in the process because my experience with paper piecing was minimal up to that point. I did a lot of revising and simplifying. Probably not enough–as Peggy will attest….

In between all this, I was collecting fabrics–and more fabrics. A trip to Tulsa yielded the fabric that became the starting point for the color theme. (“Starry Night”).

I learned to keep records of what I found where–because the fabrics often surprised us. Some of the most unlikely fabrics became the most useful–and then, of course, we needed more.

Almost 9 months later we began the construction process. Dee Ann Neal, our coordinator, and a crew of guild members helped put together 83 packets containing a pattern and enough 3″-4″ strips of fabric to make at least two blocks. The directions indicated that they could add fabrics and that they didn’t have to sew on the lines! Nor were directions given for what fabrics went where. They were also reminded that they couldn’t do this wrong–just different…

A gamble? Yes. But it paid off handsomely, because members returned blocks in color, fabric and value combinations that I would never have thought of.

Then came the fun part–putting it together. My design wall is almost quilt size so I lived and played with it for several weeks. A few more blocks were needed, mostly as transition areas, and the water blocks were made.

It was pinned in vertical strips and one work day saw it almost finished and the papers removed. It did take a while to figure out that one of the “square” blocks had been sewn in sideways and that what was making things hang funny…

All blocks that had been made “auditioned” for a place in the quilt. (My favorite didn’t make it…) Extra blocks made small “Publicity” quilts, and extra fabrics found uses too.

And by the time I could turn the quilt over to Peggy, I had spent almost 14 months with the project–and although I was pleased (mostly) with the result, I was very glad to be done with it.

To see that Peggy’s quilting had captured the spirit of the design and made it a quilt to look at again and again, was a true pleasure.

To have it accepted at Houston and then win a second place award was thrilling for all of us. There were many people creatively involved with this quilt–some of whom had never participated in a group quilt before. The true credit goes to all of them. It is a much better quilt than I would have made by myself!

Her quilting artist statement:

As a first generation quilter, the art of making quilts is relatively new to me. With a strong background in art, and having sewn since childhood, quilt making always intrigued me. I was able to take my first class at my local quilt shop in 1996 and have been quilting literally everyday since.

From the moment I started, I was hooked. I knew it was trouble when I couldn’t wait to get home to take my new fabric purchases out of the bag. Still to this day, I lay out my fabric along the dashboard of my car and enjoy them during the ride home.

For years I searched for the perfect medium of my artistic expression. With quilting I feel like I’ve finally come home. It is something I can do anywhere, often times carry with me. The palette of colors and the elements of design, both in fabric and patterns, seem endless. I know it will forever hold my interest.

A perfectionist by nature, the details of the quilt and its process are extremely important. I often focus on taking extra steps if it means achieving better results in the finished product. I try to pass that on to those that I teach and also in my pattern design.

What I find most appealing about my time spent quilting is that it frees me from everything else. The stacks of fabric that surround me become little piles of cut shapes, these shapes are gradually sewn together to become blocks, eventually those blocks become rows and piece by piece the quilt is created. It is during this time that my heart somehow finds itself at peace and the quilts become an extension of who I am at that particular moment.

It makes me very happy to share my designs and the joy that they have come to represent in my life.

I live in Canberra Australia in one of the suburbs that was hit by the firestorm on January 18 2003. This was a small crazy quilt I made in response to the fires.

The quilt is divided into 4 strips. Starting left to right, the first represents the day of the fires, the second is the debris of houses the day after. This section was worked from a photograph that I took of our next door neighbours shed floor. In the weeks afterwards we had a false autumn as stressed trees dropped their leaves this is the third section.The last section represents the mounds of wood chip produced as what was left of the burnt forest was felled. There are 4 crosses in the quilt and four panels as 4 people died a horrible death, nearly 500 houses were lost, 2000 gardens were lost, a forest with its wild life was lost and Canberra was changed forever.

Stitches are chaotic in the early strips as life was just that, and as the clean up progressed the stitches become more controlled falling into an expected pattern as life gradually returned to normal.

There are a few images online taken during that period. There was a painful exquisite beauty in some of the textures. Sometimes pain is not what was lost, but what remains. For those who are unaware of the fires here is some eye witness accounts of the day and a news report just afterwards

Measuring 70cm x 70cm (27 x 27 inches) the wall quilt is titled “Safe as Houses” because in the face of nature we are not. It was completed in 2004.