Quilt Show Thoughts

As I am writing this, I have just finished my pre-Quilt Show duties and am waiting for the Preview party.  The Quilt show is on Friday and Saturday but the Thursday night before, the Quilt Guild members get together to enjoy the show before they are busy taking care of our guests during the actual show.

We hear who won ribbons and get to see the bed turning.  A bed turning is an old tradition in Amish Country.  For those women who sell quilts, they would pile the quilts flat on a bed one on top of another.  When some one wants to see the quilts for a possible purchase, the quilter just pulls back the quilts one at a time.  Laying them flat helps keep out creases and allows the potential customer to see how a quilt would look on a bed.

For our bed turning we actually use big 8 foot tables to lay out the quilts and certain (usually tall) members will hold up the quilt for the audience to see (It is actually on a stage so everyone can see the quilts).  We often have quilts belonging to a member or quilts with a certain theme.  During the show we do a bed turning twice a day for our guests.

I like our Quilt show.  Not just because of the quilts and vendors and seeing my work on display but because of the people.  I often get to see people I don’t normally see who come to our quilt show.  Old neighbors, coworkers from the college where I teach who may have retired or work in another building I don’t get to visit often, former guild members are just some of the visitors.

But also I get to visit with current guild members.  Yes I see many of them every month at the meeting but it is hard to visit during the meeting when we have a speaker. But now we get to share.  We might talk about the quilts and which ones we like, which ones we may want to create or we talk about our families or other things we are doing.

I usually do demonstrations of quilting techniques; this year it is making yoyos.  And not only do I get to teach a show visitor something new, I get to hear their stories.  I usually hear about the quilts their mother or grandmother made.  Or the successes or challenges (I don’t want to use the word failures) they experienced.  It is a great sharing time. 

And that is really what the quilt show is about – sharing.  Our guild shares their time and energy to present a great beautiful show.  Our entrants share their creations by entering them in the show. The vendors share their products with us and our quilt show visitors (and we in turn share our money with them. haha). And everyone in one way or another shares their love of quilts, fabric, color and design.

It is a lot of work to put a quilt show together and I am usually exhausted (I joke that my feet usually hurt so much they threaten to divorce me). But I am always sad to see it end.    It feels like a mini vacation. It is so nice to spend time with such creativity and creative people.  I like our quilt show.

© 2019- Cheryl Fillion