Jul 29, 2007 - 04:03:36 CDT
Kim Deneault's journey from full-time mom and breast cancer survivor to published author and television guest started with something quite simple: Trying to help her mother complete a quilt.Deneault, who grew up in Sterling and attended Century High School, said that her mother was frustrated by trying to replicate the precision that traditional piecing requires.
Deneault, who lives with her family in North Carolina, was not a quilter but had studied commercial art at then-Bismarck Junior College. So she tried something different, cutting through layered fabrics to produce a design and finishing the seams with an "inside-out" technique that produces fluffy soft edges.
She brought one of her "raggedy" design blocks with her when she and her mom visited a fabric shop in North Carolina.
"You should make a pattern," the store staff told her. Those five words changed her life.
"Ten months later, I was on (HGTV's) 'Simply Quilts,'"she said.
She's also taught an Internet video class called "KidzSew." She's conducted workshops and lectured around the country. And she's the published author of "Raggedy Reverse Applique" (Krause Publications, 2007, $24.99).
From a non-quilter to a published author and appearance on TVin three years seemed remarkable to some of the quilters she met while taping "Simply Quilts" in California.
Even more impressive is that, during that time, she also was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent eight operations.
Coincidentally, before she was diagnosed, Deneault had designed a block that, no matter how she tinkered with it, still ended up looking remarkably like breasts. Keeping her sense of humor intact, she finally just went with it, calling the design "Booby Trap."
"This other (quilting) stuff really kept my mind off (the breast cancer)," she said.
Now with a clean bill of health for two years, Deneault has been asked to put together patterns for a second book to be published in 2009, she said.
Other opportunities have opened up for Deneault's work.
At an International Quilt Market in Houston, which brings in buyers from all over the world, Hancock Fabrics saw her patterns and put six of them in all their stores.
And then the Home Sewing Association contacted her to inquire if she would work with them on a Girl Scout project. The association donated 20,000 pieces of fabrics, which quilters know as "fat quarters," to her; with the help of some local Girl Scouts, she packaged fabric and patterns to donate 5,000 kits to scores of Girl Scout troops.
She then sent in her book proposal to Krause Publications and was accepted.
During all this, Deneault, who said she loves to work with kids, has continued to come into classrooms to help students design various projects, including a Virginia history quilt. Using textured paper and Braille guides, she even helped a student who was blind and deaf to make his own block.
Over the years, when Deneault's family, including husband, Robert, daughter, Lindsay, 22, and son, Christopher, 20, lived all over the world, from Kansas to South Africa, to Dallas, New Orleans, Charlotte, N.C., and four years in Indonesia, she has been a full-time mom and volunteer.
"I always loved working with kids," she said. "I love to see kids succeed. This technique is so fun. When they make their first pillow from their own art work, they get excited and want to keep going. Ilove to see the excitement in their faces."
(Reach Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@;bismarcktribune.com.)
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