In The Pollinator Garden | An Art Quilt Inspired By Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever
Earlier this year, I created an art quilt inspired by Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever that came to hold more than I expected. What began as just a challenge slowly unfolded into something rooted in memory, healing, and the small, steady act of noticing.
The Challenge
Through the month of January and into early February, I worked on creating an art quilt inspired by Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever for the Cherrywood Fabric 2026 Art Quilt Challenge. The theme was Storytime – which was described as holding a sense of connection, imagination, and nostalgia inspired by childhood story time.
For the challenge, each artist works within a curated palette of Cherrywood hand-dyed fabrics to create their art quilt. For the Storytime theme, the palette felt vintage and full of gorgeous, earthy colors that immediately made me think of the original Frog and Toad books: rust, mango, goldenrod, caramel, sepia, lizard, misty, aqua, and jade.
I also chose to incorporate the optional Sketchbook bundle – charcoal, taupe, mahogany, and buttercream to bring in some neutrals.
This was my first time working with Cherrywood fabrics, and I absolutely love them. I’ve already started using them in other projects because they’re easy to work with and feel so good in my hands.
The challenge uses a juried selection process to assemble a collection of about 250 art quilts that best represent Cherrywood’s vision for the year’s theme. Of course, that’s exciting but when I began, I wasn’t even thinking about selection. I just wanted to commit to something and see it through.
Designing, completing, and submitting my piece became the goal and I’m happy to say that I did.
Inspiration, Childhood, and The Present Day
When I began thinking about which book to draw inspiration from, I returned to one of my favorite childhood books – Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever, originally published in 1963. It was the first book he both wrote and illustrated, and it has stayed with me since I was very young.
As I worked with the Storytime palette, I saw how naturally it fit with the feeling of that book. I kept coming back to the pen and ink illustrations and the way they translated so easily into appliqué and line work.
As a child, I would sit and carefully study those illustrations, noticing and naming everything on the page. It felt like an early form of reading – learning the world by paying attention to it.
When I became a mother, I found a copy to share with my boys and watched them do the same thing, drawn in by the animals and their busy lives. They lingered over the pages, taking it all in, just like I did.
As I worked on this piece, I found myself returning to that way of seeing and reconnected with that feeling while also honoring something more recent.
Last year, just before my breast cancer diagnosis, our family began creating a large monarch waystation in our front yard. When I received my diagnosis in early April, so many plans for the year changed but we held onto that garden. Together, we built a space where the wildness of living things could thrive and be supported.
With each round of chemo, it became harder for me to do much in the garden, but it was always one of the first places I returned to as I began to feel better. I spent hours there noticing – watching the flowers bloom, the bees and butterflies and birds that came and went. It gave me something steady to return to, something full of life and beauty to connect to when, at times, life felt really, really hard.
As I brought that garden into this piece, I felt the meaning of it more clearly – bringing together childhood, motherhood, and healing in one place.
And through its creation, I reminded myself, over and over, that it’s going to be okay.
The Process
I hesitated to commit to this challenge when I first heard about it, mostly out of fear – the fear of not following through, of setting an intention and not being able to meet it because of my health, my energy, or even my lack of skill. I didn’t want to face another unfinished project.
But after thinking about it every day for months, I finally decided to move forward.
I ordered the fabrics and the companion Aurifil threads. At first, I chose fat quarters, but I quickly realized they wouldn’t be enough. I needed more of certain colors – especially sepia and lizard – which led to a spontaneous trip to Sew Yeah Quilting in Las Vegas, Nevada to pick up the half yard bundle. I was so grateful that they had it!
I began the design process on my living room wall, taping up large sheets of brown butcher paper with blue painter’s tape. At first, I just needed to see what a 20″ x 20″ space actually looked like. From there, I drew out the elements, scanned them in, printed them at different sizes, cut them out, taped them up, and moved them around – stepping back often to study the composition before adjusting it again and again until it felt right.
Early on, I knew I wanted a rabbit as the main character. In Richard Scarry’s garden spread, rabbits are shown at work, and I wanted to echo that same sense of life and movement. I chose to show my rabbit watering her plants with a hose – something I love to do in my own garden.
When I began stitching, I worked daily, often for long stretches of time. There were days when I stitched for more than twelve hours. I bled for this piece. I developed callouses for this piece. For a time, it became the only thing I thought about.
In the design, I included only the plants that grow here: morning glory, cosmos, strawberries, echinacea, salvia, and clover. I labeled each one, carefully stitching the names beside them. That act of naming felt important then, and it still does now. I knew it had to be part of this piece.
One of the more unexpected challenges while stitching this piece was working through neuropathy in my fingers following my double mastectomy. At times, I couldn’t fully feel the needle in my hand or the stitches I was trying to make but I kept going, relying on muscle memory to carry me through.
I drew all of the imagery by hand, then translated it into fabric through appliqué and finished it with fine black embroidered lines to echo the pen and ink style of Richard Scarry’s illustrations. I stitched every part of this piece by hand from the appliqué to the embroidery, the quilting, and the facing. Each tiny stitch made using the smallest needles and Aurifil 80wt cotton thread.
It moved slowly, but it moved forward one tiny stitch at a time.
When I was about to finish the piece, I added one small detail at the last minute – a tiny bee. I hadn’t planned for her, but as I worked, I felt the rabbit shouldn’t be alone. I followed that instinct and that little bee has become one of my favorite parts of the piece.
You might say that creating this art quilt was a labor of love – and it was. But more than that, it became a declaration of life. A choice to move forward, to seek out new experiences, and to continue creating in this season of “after” that I’m in.
The Submission
Before submitting my art quilt, I stitched my name, email address, phone number, and location into the back of the quilt. Then I lint rolled it, pressed it, and photographed it for submission.
After submitting my photos and the entry fee, I took a breath, prayed, and waited.
I already felt a deep sense of satisfaction. I had done what I set out to do. I had followed through. I had made the piece and I loved it. It came together just as I had envisioned, and I learned so much along the way. I proudly hung it up in my studio where I could sit with it and take in all of its details.
Then one day, I opened an email and saw that my piece had been selected as a finalist. I gasped out loud because there was my name on the list!
Along with that excitement came a quiet sadness though. It meant letting it go.
The space where it once hung is empty now. My quilt is in Baxter, Minnesota, where it will be professionally photographed, assigned to one of three traveling Storytime collection trunks, and displayed in places I’ve never been and seen by people I’ll never meet.
It feels like a small part of me is out in the world having its own grand adventure.
One day it will return, but for now, I’m waiting for what comes next.
Its first stop will be the Fiber & Fabric Craft Festival in Rosemont, Illinois where the full collection will be displayed May 1–3, 2026.
I wish I could see it.
Where It Is Now
This piece is currently part of the Cherrywood Storytime Challenge traveling collection. I’ll continue to update this space as it moves – keeping track of where it goes, what I learn, and what unfolds along the way.
Updates (ongoing):
- 03/23/2026 – Arrived in Baxter, Minnesota at Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics for photographing and trunk assignments after being lost for almost a week with USPS. Thankfully they found it!
- 03/12/2026 – Left the Salt Lake City, Utah area via USPS on its way to Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics in Baxter, Minnesota.
- 03/05/2026 – Notifications went out to finalists and my name is on the list!
