A three-day quilt show opening March 21 in Arcadia will feature one-of-a-kind handmade quilts that were never meant to be finished — at least not by the people who started them.
Kathleen Mello-Nadejas calls them “resurrection quilts.”
She buys unfinished quilt tops from estate sales and eBay — handmade works started by someone else, sometimes decades ago, and never completed — then adds the backs and finishing to bring each one back to life.
The free admission show at Embassy Suites by Hilton Arcadia Pasadena Area, about seven miles from Pasadena, is her first event.
“There’s a lot of people that have made what they call hoppers of a quilt, but they never finished it,” Mello-Nadejas said. “So what I’m doing is I’m picking up all these quilts from the estate sales and some of the eBay and I buy them and then I put together all the packs and I resurrect the quilts.”
Some of the tops are old. Some are newer, started by quilters who set them aside and never returned. Many are entirely hand-stitched, Mello-Nadejas said. She completes each one and displays them on beds in a hotel suite — two beds and a layout — so visitors can see how the quilts would look at home.
“The only way you can really see what a quilt looks like is on a bed,” she said.
The show also includes accessories: hand-embroidered and crocheted pillowcases and tablecloths.
Mello-Nadejas said her grandmother was a quilter. “She was just amazing, all hands done, everything,” she said. But it was a chance encounter on Spain’s Camino de Santiago pilgrimage that brought her back to the craft. On one of her four walks along the route, she met a woman who turned out to be a quilting teacher and author. That teacher — Sandy Bonsib, who has written nine quilting books and teaches at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina — encouraged Mello-Nadejas to continue the tradition.
“She said, ‘Well, you have to keep the legacy alive,'” Mello-Nadejas recalled.
Mello-Nadejas said she has since taken Bonsib’s quilting class at the folk school for three years running and plans to return for a fourth.
The quilts are for sale, but admission is free. Mello-Nadejas said she wants each quilt to end up with someone who appreciates what it is.
“I want those quilts to find a home with people that are going to cherish them,” she said, “because they’re all one of a kind and somebody handmade these quilts.”
The Resurrection Quilts & Accessories Quilt Show runs March 21–23, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Arcadia Pasadena Area, 211 E. Huntington Dr., Arcadia. Admission is free. For information, call 1-928-233-2592.
“Everything I’m showing, it’s somebody made, didn’t finish it, and we’re bringing it back to life,” Mello-Nadejas said.
