Karen Golden Not everyone comes to quilting when introduced to it by a mother or grandmother. In Karen’s case, she was a “traveling” military spouse with her family to various communities and found quilting guilds to be a ready way to meet people and share creativity. She did have sewing experience making clothing, but otherwise is a self-taught quilter. She sewed a lot of clothes at first, but the creativity that quilting offered her was a great attraction. Her favorite color is red, but she will use any colors that she needs to for her creative result. She likes challenges and will take an orphan block and build a quilt around it. She uses her own designs for quilts and continues to take classes to learn more or alternative techniques for quilts. She feels that there are many stages in developing your quilt skills, and in her experience has learned to move from one- or two-color quilts to quilts of multiple colors. She hand appliqués and hand quilts her quilts, which clearly adds to their beauty. The quilt in the picture is called “My Blue Hearts from Arkansas.” It started with white hearts that her quilting guild gave her when she had to move to another military location. She added her own embellishments to each heart and put them to together in her own design. The quilt won a blue ribbon in 1994 and remains one of her favorites because it gave her confidence that she need not follow any particular rules to create a stunning quilt. One of her friends from the Arkansas guild told her, “Your quilts never have the same edges!” She likes working in a group setting and considers the group guild for quilting one of the ways she can share her work and benefit from the work others share. Because she moved a lot as a military spouse, a quilt guild was a wonderful way to meet and be a part of the community wherever she went. She also belongs to groups online, including the Paducah Block of the Month group that gives a style for the block and the quilter is to create something in that style. One of the big benefits of that group is getting to keep the blocks. Karen is very modest about her quilting. She designed and quilted our MQ raffle quilt one year and continues to contribute her skills within her local guild.