Quilt show opens today in Moses Lake
CHERYL SCHWEIZER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 8 years, 11 months AGO
Volunteers hang a quilt during set-up for the Basin Piecemakers Quilt Guild show scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
Senior Reporter Cheryl Schweizer is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience serving small communities in the Pacific Northwest. She began her post-high-school education at Treasure Valley Community College and enerned her journalism degree at Oregon State University. After working for multiple publications, she has settled down at the Columbia Basin Herald and has been a staple of the newsroom for more than a decade. Schweizer’s dedication to her communities and profession has earned her the nickname “The Baroness of Bylines.” She covers a variety of beats including health, business and various municipalities. | June 18, 2016 6:00 AM
MOSES LAKE — More than 180 quilts, table runners, wall hangings and quilted works of art will be on display Friday and Saturday at the annual Basin Piecemakers Quilt Show at Moses Lake High School, 803 East Sharon Ave. The show runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
“A Stitcher’s World” is the theme. Admission is $5.
The quilt show and accompanying raffle are among the guild’s biggest fundraisers, said show organizer MaryAnn Bennett. Guild members made the blocks, all 100 of them, for the raffle quilt then pieced the design together; it was quilted by Laurel Whitener. The design is called “Eye Candy.” Raffle tickets are $1 each. The winner will be drawn at 3 p.m. Saturday.
Many of the quilts are donated for display by guild members, but “we invite (submissions) from wherever,” Bennett said. Quilts came from throughout the Columbia Basin, said Lynda Williams, who was in charge of submissions.
Quilters brought big quilts, little quilts, wall hangings. (For non-quilters, small quilts made for display only – to be hung on a wall – are called wall hangings.) Some quilts were dark, some were monochromatic, others were a riot of color. “An array of colors from each end of the spectrum,” Williams said. One was embellished with beads. There was a display of antique quilts from the collection of a guild member. Some quilts were traditional designs, others were abstract, still others were pictorial.
Many were made as gifts, Williams said. “And sometimes just because we love to quilt.”
Some designs require hundreds of pieces of fabric and precision in making it all fit. “Some of these ladies are really artists,” Williams said.
The show will feature a small group of vendors, demonstrations of quilting techniques and door prizes.
The high school cafeteria was filled with quilts Thursday morning, and people registering quilts, preparing quilts for hanging and hanging quilts here and there.
It was all volunteer labor by guild members (and their significant others), including one woman who said she was playing hooky from work. “It takes an army to do this,” Williams said.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.
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