Kathleen Belongia Star Quilt Banner

Quilters and Quilts #5 – Kathleen Belongia

I’m excited to welcome Kathleen Belongia, another quilting reader-friend, to my blog today to give us another peek at quilters and quilts! And I’m seeing stars!

MONA: Kathleen, your quilting journey is a bit different than the four previous quilters we’ve heard from. How did you get started quilting?

KATHLEEN: When my husband and I retired, we moved to be in the middle of our children in three states. We found our church home on the internet before calling the realtor to look at our hilltop home. In the church bulletin was a notice of a quilting group that meets all day on Tuesdays. I was invited to come and check it out. Ladies from several communities have been coming together for close to ten years now to sit side-by-side at long tables with their sewing machines and current project they are doing in class. Friendships are formed, encouragement given, and life is found here.

MONA: I was inspired by such groups as I wrote about the women in the Saint Charles Quilting Circle in The Quilted Heart novellas. Following the Civil War, Caroline Milburn found friendship and hope in the company of quilters.

KATHLEEN: During the summer months, quilts are made for missions supported by our church.

MONA: Wonderful! Tell us about your first quilt, Kathleen.

KATHLEEN: I made my first quilt from beginning to end ~ cutting, sewing my star blocks together, pinning and quilting my sandwich of backing, batting, and quilt top, and adding the binding on the edge of the borders. I love ****s. I called my first quilt, “Sleeping Under the Stars.”

Westside Quilters first quilt show, March 13, 2010—my first star quilt on left

MONA: You displayed your first quilt at a Quilt Show. What do you like most about going to quilt shows?

KATHLEEN: It’s so much fun going around and seeing what other quilters are making. I found that I like the middle ground in color and need to be a little bolder in brightness and pattern to make my block “pop.” So interesting with light, medium, and dark that bring out the color tones in a quilt. The same pattern will look completely different by the shades and combinations the quilter uses. What I especially liked was the other quilters pointing to the fabric scraps they had given me that were put into my quilt. I only quilted on Quilting Tuesdays so it took me a year and a half to complete my California King quilt that is on our guest bed.

I am working on my second quilt–queen-sized this time.

This is the photo of the quilt made by Maureen Lazenby. I am making my quilt from her photo.

The difference in my quilt is the addition of stars vertically, down the sides, and I added center panels to widen the quilt for queen size. This quilt has four sections; my quilt will have six. I have the center blocks to make of my addition and the stars that will go around the main blocks of the quilt. I wrote to Maureen and she told me the stars were from The Block Book. I loved using Judy Martin’s The Block Book for patterns and an accompanying cutting guidebook on the shapes.

MONA: Beautiful quilts–all of them! And thanks so much for sharing your story with us, Kathleen.

We’d love to hear your story. Does your church or a church in your community have a quilting group?