Stitched up — Proceeds of quilt show, auction benefit medical research, education

It begins with a needle and thread. It begins with scraps of fabric, with a creative idea, with tiny stitches taken in love.

It is easy to see where it begins.

But what about where it ends? A quilt is finished. It is given away and auctioned off. The money goes to medical research and education. That knowledge might change your life or the life of someone you love or the lives of people not even born yet.

It is hard to see where it all ends.

That is the story of the Holiday Quilt Show and Auction, which benefits the Deseret Foundation and is this year celebrating its 17th occurrence. It is the nation's largest quilt show devoted entirely to medical research.

It started in 1983 and was an annual event until 1989, when the board of directors decided a biannual show would work better. Since then more than $2.1 million has been raised for medical research, as hundreds of women have volunteered their time, talent and resources to create handmade quilts for the auction. Proceeds fund research and education at the Intermountain Medical Center, LDS Hospital, Alta View Hospital and The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital.

"I can't say enough about our quilters," says Jolene Bennett, this year's show chairwoman. "They are so generous. Anyone who has done a quilt knows how much work goes into it. To do all this, and then give it away — it makes me cry."

What makes the show even more extraordinary, she says, is that all the quilting is still done by hand. You might think with the popularity of machine quilting, it would be harder to find people willing to do work by hand. "But this year we have 80 quilts — the most we've ever had," says Bennett.

Many of the quilts have been generated at the Quilt Days held by the group on the last Tuesday of each month at the Colonial House near LDS Hospital. Others have been donated by Utah Quilt Guild groups around the state as well as by individual quilters. They range in size from table runners and small wall-hangings to king-size bed quilts.

People sometimes wonder why they still require hand-quilting, "but this is an art form we want to preserve," says board member Miriam Zabriskie. "There is beautiful work being done by machine; we don't want to discount that. But hand-quilting is an art form that is disappearing."