Correction: The date of the Festival is July 24, 2010 – not the 14 as previously stated.
The 3rd Annual Heritage, Arts & Music Festival (HAM) will take place on July 24, 2010, from noon to 5pm at Duke Energy’s World of Energy, located at 7812 Rochester Highway in Seneca, SC. The theme of this year’s festival is focused on quilts and proceeds benefit the Blue Ridge Arts Center and the Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail.
We first reported on South Carolina’s first entry into a national quilt trail project back on Feb. 15, 2010 – here’s the link to that blog entry (http://carolinaarts.com/wordpress/2010/02/15/launch-of-national-quilt-trail-in-south-carolina-feb-16-2010-in-walhalla-sc/).
Since that time a lot of activity on this project has been going on and I recently received a fairly long article about some of those activities and upcoming events, but we’re going to feed them to you in shorter bites.
So first up is the HAM Festival.
The Heritage, Arts & Music Festival (HAM Festival) offers a number of free activities for the whole family including: Quilt Historian Laurel Horton will give a talk from 1 to 3:30pm; Hands-on Art Station for Children; Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail Painting; Artisan’s Sidewalk Sale; Quilt-Themed Art Show, Featuring a Variety of Mediums on view through Aug. 20 inside lobby of World of Energy; Live Music by Conservation Theory and Four Mule Pileup; Oconee County Storyteller Phil Cheney Performs at 1pm; and National Award Award-Winning Youth Storyteller Rixon Lane Performs at 3pm.
For further information call the World of Energy at 800/777-1004 or visit (www.duke-energy.com/worldofenergy/).
So what’s been going on since last we reported? Well you could probably learn a lot by attending the HAM Festival or visiting the Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail website at (www.oconeeheritagequilttrail.com), but here’s a little of what was in the recent press release.
Quilt Square placed on Blue Ridge Elementary School – a Jackson Star
Residents of the area are beginning to see something new in Oconee County (Seneca, Salem, Walhalla, Westminster) – Quilts. Not the cloth and batting kind of quilts, but rather historic quilt patterns painted on specially prepared boards and mounted on buildings in the area. Thanks to members of the Lake and Mountain Quilt Guild (LMQG), the Blue Ridge Arts Center (BRAC) and some dedicated volunteers, the Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail (OHQT) has been established.
The Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail is in the process of creation of these “painted quilts” and hanging them where they can be enjoyed and admired by local residents and visitors alike, either one at a time or by following the Quilt Trail through the county. Once finished, the Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative installs the quilt blocks on their new homes. The blocks are then listed on the trail map in OHQT brochures and on the Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail website.
Besides creating painted quilts, the Lake and Mountain Quilt Guild and the Blue Ridge Arts Center are inaugurating the Quilt Trail in a number of ways. Mrs. Jenny Grobusky of Walhalla, SC, has been named Oconee Quilter of the Year, the first recipient of this honor. As part of the reward process, her first quilt pattern, a Dresden Plate pattern, was painted and mounted on the barn at her family farm, becoming part of the Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail. She was honored in May 2010 at a reception at theBlue Ridge Arts Center, and will be recognized again at the upcoming Lake and Mountain Quilt Guild Festival held on Sept. 17 & 18, 2010, at the Shaver Center in Seneca. The (LMQG) represents guilters from Anderson, Oconee, and Pickens Counties in SC.
We’ll offer you more about the history of the Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail and info about the Lake and Mountain Quilt Guild Festival later.
For further info about the Oconee Heritage Quilt Trail you can call Cynthia Leggett at 864/985-1271; Laurel Horton at 864/882-9933; or Martha File at 864/885-1018. You can e-mail to (info@oconeeheritagequilttrail.com) or visit (www.oconeeheritagequilttrail.com).