Ohio Valley Quilters’ Guild

Last night I had the priviledge of speaking at the Ohio Valley Quilters’ Guild in Cincinnati. I always love the opportunity to show my quilts and encourage people to experiment with new ways of creating great quilts.

I was really excited about how they displayed their quilts during show-and-tell. If you’re part of a guild, you might want to pass this idea on to tell. It was simple, low-cost, and effective.

They attached rubber-coated clips to the ends of dowels so they could easily display the quilts. There were two sizes.

The smaller version had dowel rods that were maybe 1/2″ diameter by three feet long with clips that were about 2″ long. They used an eye hook at metal links to attach the clip.

The larger version used dowels that might have been 3/4″ or 1″ diameter and five feet long with 3 or 4″ clips. For this one they used woven strapping and screws to attach the clips.

It was quick and easy to clip the quilts to the holders, so everything went very smoothly. The very large quilts were carried by two people and they could hold them 7 or 7 feet high. Mid to small quilts could be carried by one person. On small quilts, I noticed they simply crossed the rods in back and held them with one hand. (Sorry that the sign is in the way of the last picture showing that, but I think you can still get the general idea.)

In any case, I was really impressed. I don’t know if they idea was original with their guild or not, but this is the first time I had seen it, and I thought it would be very easy for other guilds to use as well.