Mt. Diablo: Pollinator Paradise shows the glory of Mt. Diablo, highlighting the local flowers and pollinators in GQCCC’s backyard. Using mostly hand-dyed gradient fabrics by Vicki Welsh, the 2023 Opportunity Quilt team created flower blocks using raw edge machine embroidery appliqué. Each member took a sketch of their flower, drawn by Valerie Sauban, and went to task to create their appliqué piece as true to life as possible, sometimes creating and recreating their block to get the perfect color hue and shade and shape to depict each flower radiantly. Once assembled, Jackie Seidell used free-motion machine quilting to complete the quilt.

The label of the quilt shows the quilt pattern with a key identifying each flower and pollinator.

Except for the bat (h) and the Alypia Mariposa moth (g), the pollinators in the quilt are located on flowers that they pollinate. Each pollinator, however, pollinates many different flowers.

The Save Mt. Diablo website states: “About 75 percent of all flowering plants rely on animal pollinators and over 200,000 species of animals act as pollinators. Of those, about 1,000 are hummingbirds, bats, and small mammals. The rest are insects such as beetles, bees, ants, wasps, butterflies, and moths.”

Opportunity Quilt Chair
Valerie Sauban

Quilt Design
Valerie Sauban

Quilt Creation
Leslie Finta
Ann Gimbel
Cindy Greco
Irma Lubbe
Valerie Sauban
Jackie Seidell
Tammy Zanella

Free-Motion Machine Quilting
Jackie Seidell

Materials
Hand-dyed cotton fabrics

Techniques
Raw edge machine embroidery appliqué, machine quilting

Total Hours
442

Raffle Winner
Jeanne Myers