Our featured artist at the Kitsap Quilters Guild show was Sharon Broom from Bainbridge Island. Sharon has been quilting for nearly 25 years after being persuaded to give quilting a go by a friend who was a quilter. Since retiring from secretarial work in the Bainbridge School District, she has more time for her quilting projects.

Here is Sharon in her display area featuring at least a dozen of her quilts. I’ve seen her quilts over the years at our quilt shows, but loved seeing them altogether as a collection and testimony of her outstanding work. She is a precision piecer and loves to applique. This lovely fans bed quilt combines her piecing and applique skills and is also beautifully hand quilted.

In the Schoolhouse blocks quilt, Sharon embellished the houses with embroidery and appliqued flowers in the windows giving each one its own special touch.

Sharon has a great sense of color and her quilts are vibrant with designs that pop. I love her sashing treatment of these stars. The Log Cabin combination with applique, and stars made from 1/2″ squares is stunning too. Her exhibit was inspiring and beautiful.

February is quilt show time for my local quilt guild, the Kitsap Quilters, and our show runs for two days, today and tomorrow at the Kitsap Fairgrounds in Silverdale. Yesterday, I spent five hours helping to hang the 200 quilts and took some pictures to share. It’s fun to see it progress from an empty hall to a beautiful exhibit.

Kitsap County covers quite a large area and we had several drop off places for the quilts. The drop-off people arrived early with the quilts that they had gathered. The quilts were sorted numerically in their categories and then placed on the appropriate spot on the floor which was labeled. The upright poles have slots in the top into which are inserted the hooks on the ends of the cross-pieces.

Each cross-piece has a white sheet with sleeve at the top. The pole is inserted through the sleeve. The quilts are required to have hanging sleeves and each has a metal dowel. The cross-pieces support two quilts, one on either side of the sheet and the metal dowels are leashed on using the plastic zip-ties. This is much easier than in former years, when the quilts had to be pinned onto the white sheets.

The show looks great – do come if you in the vicinity. We have some extremely talented quilters in the group and there is a wide variety of quilts made using different techniques. We also have several vendors as well as a boutique run by guild members and silent auction baskets containing all kinds of quilting supplies and goodies. I’m planning on returning today and will post another couple of blogs about it in the coming weeks.