The Miracle of Chloe

Many of you have learned about 'The Miracle of Chloe' and her quilt pictured here. Chloe was born on September 4, 2008 and adopted by Melissa who was in the delivery room watching her daughter be delivered via C-Section. The quilt was a gift to Chloe so that she would always know what a miracle she is and that there are hearts in every corner of the world that love her and want the very best for her always.

The design of the quilt was originally quite elaborate, but as time flew by, the design needed to be simplified. My days are full of selling on various auction sites, adding product and content to our website, keeping up with emails, purchasing fabric, patterns, decals, shipping supplies, office supplies, etc., running a household of 10 (5 adults and 5 children...Trinity (4 yrs old), twins Sonny and Skyler (3 yrs old), Aiden (2 yrs old) and Kaleb (3 weeks old)), quilting, sewing, ironing, dusting...it all gets jumbled up sometimes. Anyway, my sister who is new to quilting asked if she could help piece the top of the quilt as she wanted to make a queen size quilt for her daughter and thought Chloe's quilt being crib size might be good practice...plus my sister knows that I always try to do too many things at once so she'll take something off my list of things to do, even though she has her own list.

My daughter, De'Anna, created the center square on our Amaya embroidery machine matching the thread color to the most prominent pink fabric. My sister, Jan, then began the pleating around the center square. The pleats were meant to add something for Chloe to play with, but added a shabby chic touch to the design. The rest of the pieces followed fairly easily and looked beautiful. In fact, my sister had the whole top done in a weekend.

When my kids were little, they made weaved heart baskets from paper and I remembered seeing them incorporated into a quilt a year or so ago. I don't remember which magazine it was in, probably a February issue because the quilt was red and white, had lots of hearts and family photos. Anyway, I showed my sister how to make the weaved hearts with the intention of putting them on the corners of the quilt, putting a small stuffed animal in them and sweet little bows to tie the hearts shut. After the quilt was put together and the hearts sewn on, we realized that the ribbons might not be a good idea because we didn't want Chloe to get her fingers tied up in the strings. We thought about snaps, buttons and Velcro, discarding each for a different reason...buttons leave a mark if you fall asleep on them, Velcro sticks to everything, snaps don't taste very good. We decided to put squeaky bellows and some stuffing in each heart, then sew the hearts closed. Now when Chloe presses on any of the hearts, she'll hear a squeak.

Many thanks to my daughter, De'Anna and to my sister and best friend, Jan. I couldn't have done it without you...but you two did it without me!