Hi!
I am Cathy, I run the online group Love Quilts. If you have been a part of Love Quilts for a while I know what you are thinking, "Wow, I now have a face with all the emails!". I know how nice it is to finally see a picture of someone I have been corresponding with for a while, but they never look like I thought... I am sure it is the same with me! :-)
I am creating this page because so many have asked about me and how Love Quilts began. I thought this would be a good way for everyone to get to know me a little better.
First I will start with a bit about me. My name is Cathy, I am 41 and I have been married for 20 years to Jeff. We have two children, Curt is 19 and Kayte is 16. We live in Michigan and for 3 1/2 years we lived in the house my husband grew up in, we bought the house in October 1999. We moved into our brand
new home in June 2003 and we just love it! Both my husband and I are Christians and have been since we were children. We attend a wonderful church in our area and we just love it! I am a stay at home mom and the full time coordinator for Love Quilts. I enjoy cross stitch (obviously! LOL), crocheting, genealogy, history, lighthouses, my computer, cats, camping and more! We also enjoying having exchange students. In 2007 we had Marlene from Mexico and Jenny (Eun-A) from S. Korea. Marlene was with us for 10 months, Jenny for 5. In August 2007 we were joined by Pia from Norway, but she only stayed 2 months and moved back home. This year we had Tabea from Germany for 4 months and we had a welcome student, Sophie from Belgium. Sophie was with us for 2 weeks before she went to her permanent home. This past summer (2008) Marlene came back for a visit for 5 weeks and it was wonderful!! We miss her so much! The organization we used for our exchange students is PAX - http://www.pax.org/. We have enjoyed going through this organization.
Well, lots of people want to know how and why Love Quilts began. LQ began in February 1999 and was started because of some things that had happened in my family. In April of 1998 my first cousin's daughter, Kelsey, was diagnosed with a massive brain tumor. She was a very sick little girl and they didn't know if she would live through the operation. The sad thing is her mom had been taking her to her family doctor since she was about 3 (she was 5 by then) with complaints of headaches that made her throw up. The doctor said she had allergies at first and then said she was faking it! Finally her mom had had enough and took her to another doctor and was immediately diagnosed with a massive brain tumor that was wrapped around her optic nerve. They did the surgery in the middle of April (1998) and she had another surgery in July of the same year to remove the remaining tumor missed in the first surgery. These surgery's left her with a number of problems including the fact she has lost all of the hormone part of her brain. Your hormones control so much, including your sleep, the hormones tell you to go to sleep and when to wake up and she couldn't do that. There was the risk that she would go to sleep and never wake up because her brain wouldn't tell her too. She is now 16 years old and she is doing ok, but the effects of the tumor will last her a lifetime.
In May/June of 1998, 2 months after Kelsey's diagnosis, my nephew Justin (my oldest sisters second child) was diagnosed with bone cancer in his left leg at the age of 16. He had been doing cross country racing in high school and during a race his calf area of his left leg began to hurt. It hurt for a couple of weeks and they finally took him in to a walk in clinic and they did x-rays. The determined that he had broken the small non weight bearing bone in his leg. Because there wasn't any major trauma and he was young and healthy they looked into it more. The cancer in the bone had weakened the bone causing it to break and allowing the cancer to spread out. He started chemo right away but the leg grew bigger and bigger and he could no longer walk on it. Chemo was hard on Justin and he suffered a lot because of it. Just 2 months after he turned 17, on September 30, 1998, they removed his left leg above the knee. They tried to continue chemo, he was scheduled for about 2 years more, but his bone marrow was failing and they felt the chemo was killing him. He is continually checked and scanned for cancer, but so far is doing great and he married his long time girlfriend Becky on March 4, 2005!
When Kelsey was first diagnosed I started a prayer page for her to keep everyone updated on her progress. An online cross stitch group got in contact with me and they wanted to make a quilt for her. She received her quilt in July of 1998, see this link to view her beautiful quilt - Kelsey's Quilt - isn't it great?! When this group found out about Justin as well they decided to make a quilt for him too (our grandfather/greatgrandfather also had cancer at the time, sadly my grandfather passed away on April 30, 2003). Click here to see his wonderful quilt - Justin's Quilt - I know you will love his as well! My aunt Sharon was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 2004 and sadly, she passed away on September 10, 2005. This is the daughter of my grandfather that passed in 2003. She was the youngest sister of my father Harlin, Justin's grandfather, and of my uncle Don who is Kelsey's grandfather.
After Justin received his quilt I decided I wanted to give back to another child what these wonderful stitchers had given to the children in my family. I decided to coordinate a quilt for a child from the Make A Child Smile page, Kelsey had been featured on this site and I knew how thoroughly Alex (the founder of MACS) checks to make sure the child is legit and really sick. That is so sad, but these days you can never be too sure. I picked Katy, a child she had featured the month I began, February 1999. It was the only time I went to the Cross Stitch Pals for help, I posted all over their message board that I was looking for stitchers, it was the only way I knew to get stitchers. Well, stitchers I did get, more than I needed. So, I decided to do a second quilt with the extra stitchers, Emily's quilt and they kept coming and coming. By the end of 1999 we had made 8 quilts for the MACS kids! I was stunned and happy it was going so well, but a bit overwhelmed too.
In 1999 a really great stitcher, Vicki, approached me with help. She and I had been corresponding a lot and she knew I was very stressed with all that was going on, we were moving at the time too. She offered to help and continues to finish off many of the quilts for Love Quilts. She was receiving the finished tops (and in 2001 she even helped make every other quilt top too!) from me and she would put the batting and backing on, what a help that was! Love Quilts now has 10 finishers all over the US helping finish the quilts for our beautiful children!
The squares are first sent to Joan and she posts the scans on a site called Fotki. Joan then distributes the squares to where they need to go to be finished. Click on Fotki to see these squares!
Love Quilts has been published in two newspapers, one in Georgia and one in South Carolina and it was also listed in the Crafts 'N Things November 2001 issue and The Cross Stitcher February 2002 issue and in an article in the June 25, 2002 issue of Women's Day and in the cross stitch magazine Stoney Creek Collections in December 2005!
Love Quilts continues to grow. We have had stitchers from 33 different countries! (want to see the list? See the bottom of this page). We are now approaching 300 quilts made, amazing!! But I couldn't have done all of this without all of you out there and I will always be thankful for the wonderful stitchers who take their time to stitch for these children, you are all wonderful!
Well, on to other things about me, since this is an "about me" page :-) Thank you all for taking the time to read this long post about me and Love Quilts!
Cathy ~ Love Quilts Founder/Coordinator
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