I hope you get a chance to visit a quilt show this year.  The Southern Comforters Quilt Guild of Bowie, Maryland had their 23rd annual quilt show this weekend. This quilt show had quilting demonstrations, activities, vendors, appraisals and most importantly QUILTS.  The guild members were available through out the show and were eager to explain or answer questions of the attendees.  There are about 100 members and the guild was formed in 1982.

Here are some of the winning quilts.

The featured quilter this year was Pat Scully.

Some of Pat’s quilts were on display that span about a 10 year period of quilting.  Pat is a very talented and creates beautiful quilts.  I had a chance to talk to Pat about inspirations for her quilts.

She said some of her inspirations comes from the guild challenges.  For example, one challenge was for the quilter to pick paint chips with names starting with the quilter’s initials.  Then, match material to the paint chips and design a quilt.  Below is her quilt with the paint chips attached.

Pat says there are online quilt classes and even quilt cruises that inspire and help you learn new techniques.  Below is a quilt she made on one of these cruises.

Here is a memory quilt that Pat created with signatures of coworkers dispersed in the quilt blocks.

The members work together creating blocks and then incorporating the various block into exquisite quilts, like the one below.

The members create quilts and donate them to various charities.  A future post will be on all the work these quilters do for charities.

If you are interested in starting to quilt a good first step is to go to a quilt show.  Joining a quilt guild is also a good start, they will help you with information and classes.  There are also quilt shops throughout the Chesapeake Bay region that offer classes.  Below is Charlotte’s Cottage Quilt Shop’s fabric, one of the vendors at the show.

Here are some of Spring Water Designs’ sophisticated quilting machines for the expert quilter.  Just remember, these are not required to be a quilter.

Southern Comforters Quilt Guild website is http://southerncomforters.org/.

The guild is already planning next year’s show.  So plan to go and enjoy walking through the halls of quilts and admiring all of the talent.  It is truly amazing how pieces of material sewn together can create a piece of art and then, the quilting stitches add more to the art.