Madeline Giselman, left, Judy Robinson and Nancy Wilson, members of the Quilt Show committee, looked over one of the many entries in the show.
The flowers are in bloom and everything should be coming up roses during a weekend quilt show sponsored by the River Heritage Quilter's Guild.
Since Cape Girardeau is the "City of Roses," the show theme is "Roses." Many of the quilts and wall hangings have been made with roses or flowers in their design.
Entries aren't limited to flower designs. Other categories include pieced, applique, group, miniature and wall hanging.
More than 100 quilts will be on display at the Family Life Center at Centenary United Methodist Church, 300 N. Ellis.
It is the first local quilt show sponsored by the guild, though guild members have entered other shows. The show will be held from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Saturday and from 1-5 p.m. Sunday.
The two-day show includes entries from Arkansas, Illinois and Missouri.
The show offers demonstrations from quilters, prizes and quilt appraisals.
"We've worked hard on this all summer," said Mary Lou McNair, publicity chairman for the event.
Putting on a show is a lot like piecing together a quilt.
"You have to be willing to work toward a goal," she said.
It took about eight years for the quilter's guild to plan a show. "We needed the expertise."
But the quilt show wasn't the only summer work for many of the guild members. Each summer, the group begins a project called the "Summer Challenge."
This year, the project was to complete a round-robin wall hanging. All the work was done in groups, not individually, so each portion of the wall hanging was sewn by a different person.
"You put it together like a puzzle," McNair said. One person made the center block, passed it to another member who added a border and then passed it to a third person who added another design.
All three pieces were then sewn together to create the final wall hanging. Some members also created quilts.
"It was not the same as your original," she said. "It develops as you go. You didn't know what to expect or what it would look like."
Often, as a quilting project progresses, it takes on a special design or plan. Some quilters plan an entire project before they even begin working, so not knowing how a project would end was unusual.
But all quilters have UFOs, or UnFinished Objects.
The quilter's guild devotes at least one of its 10 meetings during the year to the UFO projects.
Usually the quilters are stuck on a pattern or design and talking to other quilters helps get their creativity flowing again, McNair said. "It's the impetus to get started again."
Giving demonstrations on pieced quilting, machine quilting and applique, paper piecing, penny rugs and rotary cutting should allow quilters to show off their work. It also might spark some interest in a first-time quilter, McNair said.
"There's something about quilting that grabs people," she said. "I'm always amazed at the stories."
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