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| 2001 Quilt Show booth with Jolene Holt |
For those who quilt and attend quilt shows, it’s obvious
that that Blanding has hosted a standout quilt show for more than five years! (Now going on 34 Years as of 2023).
Starting in 1989, Blue Mountain Shadows sponsored an
expansive Folk Fair Festival with all kinds of folk arts, programs, and food
booths. This was held at San Juan High
school for seven years. The quilt show
was in the cafeteria and each year it was totally filled with beautiful quilts.
Other folk craft booths lined both
sides of the hallway, with presentations done in classrooms.
Some of the die-hard
quilters who helped with these early shows, included Eve Lynn Perkins, Kathleen
Lyman, Bonnie Meyer, Norma Madden, Ada Rigby, Edith Young, Gayle Marian, Ingrid
Meyer, Ruth Nielson, and Kathy Hurst as well as their husbands, and sons and
grandsons. Many, many others helped orchestrate the shows, as it takes a lot of
manpower to hang 100 quilts or more in just a day!
The biggest show the local guild ever masterminded was in
1996 for the State Centennial Celebration.
They joined forces with Monticello quilters and pulled in 200 beautiful
quilts of all makes and styles. In
addition, quilters were photographed and a short story and photo were framed
for display at the folk festival, and were later hung at the Senior Citizen
Centers. Eventually these frames were
given back to the quilters. Though many
of these quilters are no longer with us, but their influence is still
remembered.
Both Monticello and Blanding made beautiful Centennial
Quilts for the 1996 state celebration and those two quilts are featured as
cover photos in the 1997 issue of Blue Mountain Shadows which was celebrated
100 years of quilts and the people who made them. This magazine was compiled and edited by
Kathy Hurst. Quilts along with short
biographies of 147 San Juan County quilters are included in that heirloom
issue, which will be on sale at this year’s 27th annual quilt show.
It’s possible that quilt shows began even before this, back
when Blanding hosted Frontier Days, but someone else will need to find records
on those---anyway, quilt shows have been going a lot longer than five years!
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