Nancy Halvorsen’s Life in Full Bloom

Nancy Halvorsen of Salt Lake City, Utah, has been designing quilt patterns and project books since 1992 and designing fabric for Benartex since 1996. “I have always been interested in creating, drawing and sewing since I was a little girl,” she said. “I sewed by hand, before I was old enough to use a sewing machine, to create dolls and accessories. As I got older, I sewed my clothes and things for my home.”

It was by pure chance that she got involved in quilting, and very soon after she began designing her own patterns. “A friend who was teaching a class on hand piecing introduced me to quilting,” Nancy recalled. “It didn’t take long before I was having fun designing my own quilts and projects and pulling together my love for all sorts of artistic expression.” After receiving lots of positive feedback for her quilt designs, she decided to take her newfound love for quilting even further.

“So many friends asked me where the designs had come from that I decided to try publishing a few pattern packets,” she said. “I felt comfortable self-publishing my patterns because I worked for a printer all through high school and college. I published my first patterns in 1992 and exhibited at my first wholesale quilt show in 1994. That’s when Art to Heart really took off and I’ve loved every minute of it!”

Nancy’s innovative and appealing Art to Heart designs are recognized and loved around the world. She just published her 52nd book, Imagine (Art to Heart, 2017), a Block-of-the-Month project book with an uplifting word in each block. She is constantly working on new patterns, fabric collections and project designs, finding inspiration everywhere. Many of her designs have positive, uplifting messages and images, and her Life in Full Bloom quilt, included in the March/April 2018 issue of McCall’s Quilting, is no exception! She talked to McCall’s Quilting about her inspiration for her cheerful pieced and appliqued lap quilt.

“We all have trials and adversity in our lives,” she said. “We might not have any control over these situations, but we do have control over how we react to them. We can choose to be happy in any circumstance, no matter what. I designed this quilt to remind us to always choose to be of good cheer and to live life in full bloom!”

See more quilts by Nancy at arttoheart.com. Subscribers to The Quilting Company’s video series can watch Mary Fons’ “Quilting with the Stars” interview with Nancy; click for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.