Friends finish woman’s final quilt for charity auction

Chris Manning’s grandmother taught her to quilt when she was just 12 years old, a skill that became a gift-receiving source of joy and comfort to her loved ones, who outlived the talented Bountiful mother and grandmother. She died a year ago from cancer.
Manning made scores of quilts and other types of textile art, creating personalized gifts for her children and grandchildren, as well as for her friends. She quilted and presented Utah’s official state gift to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on his first visit to Utah. She’d honed her craft, studying textile art and quilting in far-flung locations that included India, Japan and Nova Scotia. And always, she shared what she’d learned, teaching others at Les Soeurs Anglaises in France as well as both teaching and learning from quilters close to home.
Over the years, Manning gave the fruits of her talent away to benefit charity, serving as a board member of the Holiday Quilt Show, which raises money for the Intermountain Foundation. But no cause was evermore dear to her than that being celebrated this year at the Holiday Quilt Show and Auction, where her final quilt, pieced together by other quilters after her death and finished by her good friend Shauna Butler, is being featured at an event raising money this week in Salt Lake City for the Grant Scott Bonham Fetal Center at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital.
The state-of-the-art fetal center needs an equally cutting-edge fetal ultrasound machine. The money from the tickets, the dinner and the auction will help make that happen.
The Mannings’ second granddaughter was born unexpectedly and very early as her parents were coming home from a vacation. The baby spent weeks in a newborn intensive care unit in California, said Brent Manning, Chris’ husband of nearly 54 years.
“She loved babies,” he said of his late wife. “The idea of a baby not making it and needing help, that was very important to her.”
Chris Manning had begun planning what she called the “Baby Born” quilt, inspired by the children’s book by that name, and she’d gotten permission from author Anastasia Suen and illustrator Chih-Wei Chang to create a design similar to the book cover in quilt form. Her cancer diagnosis was sudden and she spent her last three weeks dividing up the materials she’d accumulated, including that for the quilt, with her crafty friends. She also asked Butler, a dear friend and neighbor for more than 30 years who was a past chair of the quilting show, to make sure the quilt was finished so it could be included this year, Brent Manning said.
The Baby Born quilt features 60 babies of different races, each swaddled tightly in colorful material, their tiny faces embroidered and full of expression. Some are sleeping, some are awake. They are each unique, clear down to whether they have little curls or bald heads. Chris Manning planned the design and picked the fabric that she wanted to bring the quilt to life. But her sudden diagnosis put the project in other hands.
Willing members of the Silver Mine Quilters Guild did the applique, sewing the babies in place, before giving the project back to Butler to hand-quilt and bind. Butler was entrusted to bring the project home.
Baby Born is one of 76 quilts — each handmade — that will be displayed and, hopefully, also sold during the three-day event, said Judy Reese, the current Holiday Quilt Show volunteer board chairperson. The quilts, she said, have been donated by quilting guilds and individuals who want to help babies and their families.
Besides individual efforts, some of the artists get together every month to work on the quilts, Reese said. The quilting day gatherings provide a good opportunity for both those who love to quilt and those who’d like to learn the art. Dozens of men and women gather on the fourth Tuesday and Wednesday of each month at the Intermountain Foundation warehouse, 824 W. Fine Drive, Suite 100, in South Salt Lake from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and work together. Lunch is provided.
“Newcomers are more than welcome,” Butler said, noting the group wants to keep the art of hand-quilting alive, so they’re all happy to teach others.
Dr. Stephen Fenton of University of Utah Health, who is medical director of the Grant Scott Bonham Fetal Center at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital, said that the ultrasound machine the quilt show and auction will help buy is key to diagnosing and treating what is happening in an unborn child’s development when something has gone awry.
“Our most important tool in figuring this out is through imaging, with an ultrasound most often being used,” Fenton told the Deseret News by email. “These remarkable machines have come a long way since first being implemented. Much like personal computers, they need to be updated and replaced every few years due to advances in technology.”
But the cost is significant.
“The proposed donation by the 2024 Holiday Quilt Show and Auction will help the Grant Scott Bonham Fetal Center replace one of our older models with a GE Voluson Expert 22 machine,” he said, its cost being about $250,000. “This will allow us to provide the highest level of care for these complex moms and babies, including providing life-altering interventions while the child is still within the womb.”
Fenton said the center is both “honored and filled with gratitude for all the time and effort being put into these beautiful quilts, which will benefit our center so greatly.”
The Holiday Quilt Show and Auction has been an every-other-year staple since 1983. It is billed as one of the last remaining all-hand-quilted quilt shows in the United States.
The show runs Nov. 14-16 and the quilts will be on display at Little America Hotel, 500 S. Main St., Salt Lake City, on the mezzanine level from 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, then from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
Saturday night, the quilts will be for sale during two auctions — one silent, one live — at the gala dinner, which starts at 6 p.m. in the Little America Hotel Grand Ballroom. Tickets for the exhibit are available online or in person for $8. Tickets to the gala and auction can only be purchased online and are $150 a person or $1,500 for a table of 10.
Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital said the show over the years has raised more than $4.5 million to support Intermountain Foundation work, boosting high-quality health care, medical research and education.
More information on the show — and the monthly quilting days — can be found at holidayquiltshow.org. And the 2024 quilts that will be exhibited and sold can be viewed here.