Quilting from the heart

DENTON – What began as a hobby nearly 40 years ago grew into a passion and second career for master quilter and teacher Kay Butler of Denton.

Her first project, an Amish-design “Center Square” baby quilt, cuddled her daughter Patricia, when Kay and her husband Donnie Butler brought her home from the hospital in 1987. Nineteen months later, Joshua came home in his own “Sunshine and Shadow” quilt. Her third quilt in 1988, a full size double Irish chain, won blue ribbons at both the Queen Anne’s and Caroline county fairs.

At that point, there was no turning back. “I was struck with the quilt fever, and it’s never left me,” Kay said.

At the time, Kay was teaching algebra at Lockerman Middle School in Denton, where she spent her entire 31-year teaching career. When she retired from Caroline County Public Schools about 15 years ago, she was already an accomplisher quilter who taught others the craft and collected awards for her meticulously stitched and creatively colorful art. Since then, she’s been a leader, expert and collector in the quilting community in Caroline County, central Delaware and beyond.

She recalled The Quilter’s Cupboard, a shop in downtown Denton where she first took classes and bought fabrics until the store closed less than a decade after it opened. “I took every class,” she said. She also learned how to add her “signature” to the back of every quilt, a panel that tells the story and date of the quilt, as well as a personalized narrative that adds value to it.

Quilts hang on the walls of her cozy home, built in 1900, amid vintage furnishings. An open cupboard in the living room houses folded quilts of all sizes. Draped across a blanket stand are her works in progress.

Idle hands are not part of her nature. Raised near the tiny village of Dominion on Kent Island, the former Kay Lee, 69, was born into a family of watermen. Her uncles were watermen, as were her late father Wendell and her grandfather, Capt. Lester Lee, who was immortalized in William W. Warner’s Pulitzer prize-winning book Beautiful Swimmers. Caroline County “is the land of my mother's people,” she said.

She’s a member and former president of Heartland Quilt Guild that meets on first Thursdays at Calvary Baptist Church in Denton. She’s been an officer of the guild for 17 of its 40 years. She’s also a member and former president of the Helping Hands Quilt Guild of Camden, Delaware. She belongs to Bayside Quilters of the Eastern Shore in Talbot County, the Old Kent Quilt Guild in Chestertown, the Baltimore Appliqué Society and the American Quilt Study Group.

During the pandemic, Donnie and Kay remodeled their 1,700 square foot basement to become a bright and sunny space for her Quilted Blessings studio and classroom, and to accommodate supplies, work tables, ironing boards, and hundreds of yards of quilting fabric, fat quarters, quilts in progress and antique quilts.

“I’m very proud of my stash,” Kay said, smiling. “You know, we all have some kind of vice, and I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don’t cuss, but I do collect fabrics.”

The sheer volume and variety of quilts Kay has created and collaborated on and collected is astounding. They range from a challenge quilt that hung in the Maryland State House one Christmas to millennial quilts with specially designed fabrics to Words of Wisdom quilts. The color palettes evolve over time, too, reflecting current decor preferences or vintage or antique hues, such as “Turkey red” or Perkins “fugitive” purple.

One of her favorites is a “red work” quilt of U.S. Presidents created by Lockerman eighth graders as part of an interdisciplinary service learning project. Mimicking a popular late 19th century style, one of the two quilts was raffled, and Kay has the other one. 

Her “all-time favorite genre” is the collection of Baltimore album quilts fashioned during the mid-19th century before the Civil War. They are “as good as it gets,” she said. The elaborate motifs typically feature baskets of flowers, the American eagle and flag, as well as Baltimore landmarks.

The “president’s quilts” Kay has received from the guilds she’s led have become precious mementoes of the sisterhood of quilters she’s known through the years. Each square contains a design and sentiment or Bible verse meaningful to the president, and is signed by the quilter. “If you are feeling down one day, all you have to do is get out your quilt and read some of the sentiments that the ladies shared,” she said.

Another favorite is her diary quilt. Pointing to each square, she explained the blocks that symbolize events and loved ones and her faith. “The shamrocks are my mom, the crab is my dad, my grandmother's flower garden. That's my grandmother. That's my husband, and I teach,” she said. “The mariner's compass represents my daughter who does missionary work. My son served in Iraq. The dove represents the Holy Spirit who guides me.”

Kay said she “absolutely” feels a kinship with quilters who have gone before. “The reason why I started collecting antique quilts was because I could just almost … (sense) some of the life stuff that they had to go through back then,” she said. “I thought, ‘You didn't have all the the amenities that we have, and yet you took time to stitch it like this.’”

Kay teaches at the Fiber Arts Center in Denton where she serves as vice president until the end of 2026. “We've had lots of appliqué classes, and I have converted a lot of piecers into applicators there. A group at the Center creates Quilts of Honor for honorably discharged veterans.

In 1992, Kay became an “appliqué nut.” It was a difficult skill to learn, and she turned to Mimi Dietrich, a renowned master quilter and author from Catonsville.

Mimi is the one who made appliqué very doable for me, because appliqué was tough,” Kay said. “I have not left it since. I would rather appliqué than piece any day, really, because it's hand work. It relaxes me. It lowers my blood pressure. And I know that the ladies from years ago, that's what they did, and it kind of connects me to the ladies in the past.”

Both Kay and Mimi are featured in the beautifully photographed January 2022 edition of Quiltfolk magazine that focused on Maryland quilters. It “sold out in no time,” Kay said. “There were a lot of people interested in the Maryland quilters, so that was kind of cool.”

While Kay doesn’t appraise quilts, she can determine the approximate age of vintage and antique quilts. Her trunk show of about 30 antique quilts is popular throughout the region. She has created many PowerPoint presentations, but “you lose the impact” of being able to see the handwork and quality of the quilts in person, she said.

“This is not a livelihood for me,” Kay said. “This is a passion, and the bottom line is, (to) glorify the Lord somehow, some way. She said she puts her life verse of Proverbs 3:5-6 on a lot of her quilts. “That may not be a popular message, but it's my message.”

She is particularly fond of her “magnum opus,” which is based on an intricate antique quilt featuring appliquéd botanicals from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The original quilt was made in 1856 by Esther Blair Matthews, and Kay began work on hers in January 2016, finishing it two years later. “I did a block a month, and during that time Donnie had colon cancer, so this became a prayer cloth to me. … He did get through it, and the Lord sustained him, just like the Lord sustained Esther Blair Matthews through her time of losing three grandsons to the Civil War. When I made my quilt, I wanted the world to know that this quilt represents what God can do for people, and that was important for me to showcase that.”

The quilt has been featured in three shows around the country, including the prestigious Houston Quilt Show, the largest in the world. Because she was caring for Donnie, Kay couldn’t travel to see it showcased.

If her quilts have served as prayer cloths, the act of quilting is sometimes therapeutic. One quilt became “the medicine I needed when Trish went to college,” she said. She’s currently working on quilts for her two granddaughters who live in Cambridge.

Kay recently finished a 22-hour project: creating a pattern of an 1844 quilt made by Ellen Wells of Pennsylvania, painstakingly tracing each detail, including 1,500 appliquéd berries. The pattern has been printed and is now available for quilters to purchase.

“You know, you take whatever the Lord gives you and you run with it,” Kay said. “And I've tried to do that all these years. … I would lose sleep because I enjoyed it so much. A lot of these are prayer cloths to me; I prayed for a lot of my friends and what's going on in the world.”

Kay has no intention of slowing down, but she has planned for the day she’ll no longer be stitching and praying and teaching. “I hope someone will appreciate (my quilt collection), if the Lord tarries,” she said.