Orem • The quilts are stacked all over Nacele Hart’s living room — folded and piled neatly in a rainbow of patterns and colors.
Hart, 77, never set out to make this many, 100 total in 10 years of a life spent making more than an estimated 400, but a single stitch of an idea blossomed into a decade-long project after she returned from a Mormon mission in Australia.
“I thought, ‘what if I made a quilt and connected it to some life lesson or a principle of the gospel or a song or something that was meaningful in myy life,’ Hart said, “and that that would become meaningful in the lives of the ones that I gave it to.”
She set her sights on hosting her own quilt show — a chance to display her work and then give quilts to her three sisters, 16 children, 59 grandchildren and 63 great-grandchildren — each one with a special message attached.
Three and a half years ago, Hart was diagnosed with uterine cancer, but had beaten it after treatment and surgery to remove “anything they thought carried the cancer.”
With two quilts left to complete, the cancer returned in the early summer — this time, metastasized, aggressive and inoperable.
Early memories
Hart is a self-taught quilter and has never entered her quilts in any kind of competition.
“I never felt like it was that good maybe because I didn’t have any lessons and I didn’t really know what was expected,” she said.
In her earliest memories, Hart can recall drawing patterns and pictures of skirts and dresses she wanted her mother to sew for her.
“I kind of learned from her that you can make your own patterns and do your own thing,” she said.
She shows a baby blue quilt with a pattern of a girl holding flowers and a butterfly fluttering nearby that she drew and embroidered before her mother finished quilting it — made 54 years ago for her daughter.
“I never even took home economics in high school, because I didn’t think I liked it. But then when I started sewing, I just loved it,” she said.
Battling again
On Thursday, she finished her 12th round of chemotherapy out of 18 as part of a treatment plan that also includes daily radiation for five weeks and potential surgery.
“It’s kind of a long haul,” she says.
She admits she couldn’t plan the quilt show herself — her energy sapped further after each round of chemo — but that her kids wouldn’t let her cancel any plans. “They just said ‘no, mom. You’re getting your quilt show.’ They just took over,” she said.
She named one of the last two quilts: “It’ll be OK” and pushed through to finish the last of the bunch — a tiny one to be hung on a wall.
When the quilts were finished, she put photos of them online in early August for her children to pick, then grandchildren, then great-grandchildren over age 8 in descending order.
She’ll show the quilts to friends, family members and community members on Friday at a church in Orem and then will hand the quilts out to recipients on Saturday afternoon. She’ll hang on to one, however, at her husband’s request.
“I have their names on all of the tags,” she said. “They’re all done.”
Quilting legacy
Hart enjoys the process of taking a range of fabrics, envisioning how they fit and embroidering, stitching and sewing them together carefully to reach an end product.
She sees overlapping themes in her quilting mentality and her approach to cancer treatment: A methodical march — counting down every round of chemotherapy until the projected end of the cycle around Christmas.
Her focus over a decade was driven by more than fabric, pushed forward by how the messages — of hope, spirituality and family — would resonate in perpetuity even if the seams eventually unravel.
“I think that helped me, thinking about that it was going to help somebody,” she said. “It’s kind of a legacy.”
As her loved ones walk away with their quilt, Hart said one message rises above the rest.
“If you just do things one stitch or one seam at a time, you can really accomplish a lot. In thinking about it, that’s kind of how I’ve gotten through life,” she said. “One seam at a time.”