PILGRIMAGE TO PADUCAH: AREA QUILTERS MAKE IT TO SEMIFINALS

The Academy Awards may be thrilling, but for quilters the International Quilt Show & Contest in Paducah, Ky., is the night of nights.

The show-room at the Executive Inn will be overflowing with quilters and quilt fans. One by one, the winners in the 15 categories will be announced and brought to the stage to be honored as the best quilters in the world.

"Your heart's pounding until they get to your category," says Lynne Taylor of Scott City, a semifinalist in 2001.

This is the fourth year Cape Girardeau's Judy Robinson has made the semifinals. This year she has qualified two quilts for the 17th annual International Quilt Show & Contest to be held April 22-23 in Paducah, Ky., home of the American Quilter's Society Museum.

The president of the American Quilter's Society has called the show and contest "our championship game, our royal coronation and our World Series all wrapped up in one huge event."

More than 35,000 quilt lovers from all over the world are expected to make a pilgrimage to Paducah that weekend. Robinson and Taylor are among 409 semifinalists whose quilts will be on display at the show. Fifty-one of those will win prizes.

Taylor and Robinson were both in the championship game last year as well, Taylor for a miniature quilt and Robinson for co-designing the River Heritage Quilter's Guild quilt honoring Southeast Missouri State University's 125th anniversary. The "SEMO Quilt" won an honorable mention.

The top three places in the 15 categories will divvy up $100,000 in prize money, with $18,000 going to the quilt judged Best of Show.

Robinson made it to the semifinals this year with the miniature quilt "Cherry Basket" and her full-sized "Murphy's Garden," so named because "everything went wrong with it." She competes in the professional categories because she is a quilting teacher.

Taylor's miniature ""All Around the Neighborhood" incorporates her favorite themes of old houses and natural colors. "I plan on getting bold someday," she laughs.

Robinson retired six years ago after teaching home economics at Scott City High School for 24 years. Taylor teaches art at Scott City Elementary School. Both are members of the River Heritage Quilter's Guild.

Robinson made her first quilt when she was pregnant with her first child and her first serious quilt for her first grandchild. She learned from a television program and from books.

"My mother didn't quilt," she says. "In fact, she sold all the family quilts at an auction. She grew up poor, and having quilts was poor."

Today, everybody wants quilts, especially heirlooms.

Traditional American quilting methods and patterns were brought here by immigrants from the British Isles, in particular Wales. Quilting died out during the Victorian era, had a rebirth in the 1920s and became invaluable during the Great Depression.

Another dip in popularity followed. "People were in awe of machine-made things," Taylor said.

One of the unknown benefits of the counterculture of the 1960s is that hippies preserved quilting at a time when most everybody else considered it pass, Robinson said.

The American Bicentennial brought another surge of interest.

A revolution in quilting occurred in 1989, when the winner of the Best of Show was a machine-made quilt. Now more than half the quilts entered in the contest are machine-made.

Taylor's family quilts also were lost. They blew away in the tornado that devastated her grandmother's house and much of Cape Girardeau in 1949. Her first quilts were a wall hanging, a project for her master's degree in art education.

Quilting because combines two of her favorite activities -- making art and sewing. "And you don't have to make it fit your body," she says.

Robinson has made more than 100 quilts in her career, Taylor closer to 15. Each one is part of her life, Robinson says.

"You live with them so long."

Taylor makes quilts "for the sheer joy." The images they contain have personal meaning for her, meaning she hopes others can appreciate. "But it's mostly for me," she says.

In the world of quilters, Caryl Fallert of Oswego, Ill., and Coloradan RickyTims are the queen and king, quilters whose innovative creations have been recognized as Best of Show in many contests. On awards night at Paducah, Fallert's clothing usually matches her quilt, and the former flight attendant's quilt usually has a flying theme.

The Oscar show should be so good.