A Report from the Western North Carolina Quilters Guild Quilt Show

Yesterday I made my way to Flat Rock, NC for the Western North Carolina Quilters Guild quilt show.  It was held at the Youth Activities Building at Bonclarken Conference Center.  Since it was at a Youth Activities Building, I thought it might be a very small show.  I assumed the Youth Activities Building would be too small for a show that had dozens of quilts.  But to be fair, I had no knowledge of the conference center until I arrived yesterday.

Lo and behold, it's a church camp run by/associated with Associate Reformed Presbyterians, a very conservative branch, judging by their statement of beliefs. on a page on their website that says this:  "We require that our guest groups do nothing by word or act while using our facilities that will in any way detract from or be contradictory to our beliefs."

I did not explore the website before I went, but I assume the quilt show and the people who came to admire the quilts didn't do anything against the beliefs that the website page proclaims.  But I digress.

The quilt show was huge, but it was arranged in a cozy way, with quilt display racks put in a variety of 90 degree configurations.  It was easy to move through, to duck between racks when the amount of people became too much in one square of displays.  Exhibitors ringed the periphery.  If I had wanted to spend time looking through the fabrics for sale, I'd have found it claustrophobic.

I got there just at 10 and had no problem getting to the admission table.  Twenty minutes later, the line was long.  When I left at 11, the line had dwindled again.  I was surprised by how many people came to a quilt show on a Friday morning.  I am assuming they were mostly retired; no one trundled along with a baby stroller, for example.

We were allowed to take pictures, so one of the disadvantages of the set up was that as one backed up to take a picture of a quilt, it was hard not to back into someone.  In the past, I've taken pictures because I was inspired or because I wanted to capture a pattern to try.  Yesterday I took pictures mainly to send to people in past quilt groups of mine with a text that said I missed them.

I did want to capture this quilt, with its variety of strips and shapes that inspired me about how to put small pieces together, even if they are not symmetrical squares.  I'm not sure that you can see it in the whole quilt, but here it is:

"Butters' Improv" by Christina Allday-Bondy

I loved this quilt with the colors that reminded me of both the ocean and the late spring mountains in my Southern Appalachian range, which take on a blue-green haze this time of year:

"Happy 50th Anniversary" by Joanne Shafer

I also loved this quilt because it was based on rectangles, not squares:

Here's a quilt that does something interesting with rectangles and squares to create windows, with a very different effect on me than the above (above is restful, below is a bit more chaotic):

"City Windows" by Teresa Spohn

But I couldn't resist a quilt like this one, which has some of my favorite autumnal things, a quilt done all in wool:

"Posies and Pumpkins and Puppy, oh my!" by Linda Lou Harris

And here's one of just pumpkins:

"Pumpkins Galore" by Debbie Griffin

This post is getting long, so let me make a list of things I noticed; I made a similar list after a quilt show in November of 2011, and I found it interesting to revisit it today.

--Lots of mentions of various artists' patterns and fabrics that the quilter had chosen.  I've been to quilt shows where you couldn't submit quilts made from a kit, but that was not the case yesterday.  I am agnostic when it comes to kits and patterns.  I would likely not buy one, but that's because I know myself, how easily irritated I am by trying to figure out a set of directions--and because I'm cheap.

--I saw no hand quilting of any kind.  Not much evidence of hand work, very little beading.

--Similarly, there was very little in the way of embellishments of any kind.

--There were more large quilts (throw quilt or bed size) than small quilts.

--There was a traditional pattern here or there, but often, when there was a traditional pattern, there was something non-traditional about it, like wild fabric patterns or a border that did something more modern.

--That said, I also didn't see much in the way of experimental quilts.  I'm not even sure how to define that idea, but most of the quilts, perhaps all the quilts, would appeal to large parts of the population.  There were a few displays of small, art quilts, clearly a challenge taken on by quilters in a guild, like creating a small quilt that tried to embody (enfabric?) a work of art.  I didn't see any larger quilts that I would define as an "art quilt," although there were plenty of large quilts that had qualities that I could call artistic.