May Issue 2000
The Charlotte Quilters' Guild
In 1977, eight women who quilted together in Charlotte, NC, decided to organize as a formal group. That spring they were chartered as a guild through the National Quilting Association and put on their first public exhibit at Queens College in Charlotte.
Twenty-two years later, the Charlotte Quilters' Guild has a membership of 275 women and men, has mounted dozens of local public shows and exhibits, and is preparing to host the North Carolina Quilt Symposium - for the third time.
Sharing the love of quilting, and encouraging public appreciation of this time-honored art and craft, are the guild's mission. From earliest days, guild members demonstrated quilting and talked about their art at events ranging from the annual Folk Life Festival at Latta Plantation Park to the 1999 opening of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design. Quilt tradition and technique have been taught by members of the guild in local schools, colleges, senior centers and through private classes.
Quilts have been hung for display at such sites
as Charlotte/Douglas International
Airport, the Hezekiah Alexander House/Charlotte Museum of History
and the Art
Festival held at University Place each fall. Professional quilters
and fiber artists give programs at the guild's monthly meetings,
which the public can attend.
Annual shows of members' work allow quilters not only to have their work judged by professionals, but also to share it with the public. The annual shows of members were held for several years at The Charlotte Observer building. Hundreds of visitors from all over the Carolinas and beyond come to see the quilts, currently displayed for a weekend each March at St. Ann Catholic Church.
Earnings from the show and from an annual raffle quilt fund the guild's major project: community outreach. Starting in the 1980s members made crib-size "cuddle quilts" to give to sick children and their families at the Ronald McDonald House in Durham, NC. In the mid-'90s the quilts began going instead to families of premature infants at Presbyterian Hemby Children's Hospital in Charlotte. Members have produced more than 2,000 handmade quilts over the years for Hemby babies, children with cancer at Carolinas Medical Center, children at A Child's Place and women and children at the Battered Women's Shelter.
Support for the quilters of tomorrow began in earnest in 1995 with the awarding of the first $1,000 scholarship to a college student studying in a textile-related field. Students at area institutions are invited to apply, and the guild grants the competitive scholarship each spring.
1999-2000 is an exciting year for the guild. Members are working on the state symposium and a slate of related events collectively called "Charlotte Quilt Extravaganza 2000." The menu looks both forward and back - with "Quilt National", a traveling show of cutting-edge arts quilts, and with an exhibit of broderie perse quilts made in Mecklenburg County 150 years ago and brought together for the first time.
For further information call Norie Sanchez at 704/542-1524.
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