Our Western North Carolina Quilters Guild biannual show is coming up on May 15-16 in Flat Rock at Bonclarken Conference Center in the Youth Activities Building. This is a wonderful show with lots of quilting inspiration and creativity on display with wonderful vendors, our quilt raffle, used bookstore, raffle baskets, special exhibits and a gift shop. This year the raffle baskets are themed with not just sewing, but cooking and gardening among others. The quilting one has fabrics, notions, hotel stay for Paducah and gift certificates with the total worth over $1000!! There will be a food truck on site, so you can have lunch and continue shopping and enjoying the show all day.

The gift shop this year will feature more items for quilters and non-quilters to purchase for gifts. I’ll have sewn, ebroidered and quilted items in the gift shop along with handmade cards. I’ve made produce bags, foot control pads, mug and mat sets and kitchen sets to sell.

These are pretty cute, sewing theme mugs with embroidered mats.

I have three quilts entered into competition this year, plus two for display in the Worldwide Quilting Day exhibits from this year and last year. First up, Lemon Twist. The pattern for this quilt is available on My Patterns page.

Next, my Spotlight Quilt with the custom quilting is entered in throw size quilts. This is a jelly roll design, and I just published the pattern on My Patterns page. The introductory price is $6 for a limited time. All you need is one jelly roll and a few small panels 4-1/2-inches square, or use embroideries. I used both in my quilt.

I custom quilted it, with ruler work and free motion in the yellow frames and feathers in the jelly roll strips in alternate directions.

The third quilt I am entering for competition is Koi Pond. This is the one with about 450 individually hand sewn seed beads.

I changed the water lily as I didn’t really like the one I did with individual petals. It never looked good to me. So I found a fabric with printed ones, removed the first one and replaced it with these two. I like this a lot better.

The show will have two displays of our Worldwide Quilting Day challenges for the past two years. The 2025 challenge was It’s My Birthday. This was my entry that did not place. The challenge fabric was pleated to represent a cupcake liner, with wool for the cupcake, and a dimensional gathered dark brown polyester fabric for chocolate frosting. My favorite cake is French vanilla with dark chocolate frosting. The candle is embroidered.

The 2026 challenge was Looking Out My Back Door, and I imagined a fantasy garden with elves in hot air balloons sprinkling magic dust to prevent pests and weeds. See the full post along with the story I wrote for the piece on my post Worldwide Quilting Day. I won fourth place in the viewer’s choice judging.

The entries are laying flat on the guest bed to keep them from creasing. I have to cover the labels and then they will be ready to enter.

Plan to come to Flat Rock on May 15-16 and see the show. Take a look at the Guild’s Facebook Page to see more about the vendors and special exhibits, gift shop and bookstore, and more. Make a weekend of it! Stay overnight in one of our wonderful B&Bs, shop downtown and have a meal in one of our great restaurants.

I’ll be at the show on Friday working the bookstore. Come see me! Does your guild do a show? Are you close enough to come see our show?

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