Quilts Stitch Together Farragut Showcase
Presented by the Town’s Arts and Beautification Committee, the show featured thoughtful, sentimental and beautifully pieced works of fabric art.
Residents meandered along the displays last weekend to admire the entries. Among them, friends and fellow quilters, Betsy Tyler and Deb Stegner, enjoyed the show on Saturday.
“We met at a quilting class at Gina’s Bernina Quilt Shop about two years ago,” Stegner said. “I never quilted before.”
“We learned how to hand piece,” Tyler added. “We became friends and made my first quilt and Deb’s second.”
Since then, Stegner has made four quilts and Tyler has made two.
“This is fun to see,” Stegner said about the show. “We look at how things are put together, the material used. It’s fun.”
The entries included works from Sandy Bumbalough, Jenni Craddick, Sharon Davis, Tammy Reed Doyle, Dottie Godolphin, Nancy Hulley, Alyssha Jenson, Erin Keegan, Cindy Lancaster, Maryann Magra, Ruth Anne Marsh, Sheri Ratliff, Elizabeth Rea, Sandra Rea, Jody M. Rickerson, Mary Salbach, Anna Seabolt, Jenny Trussell and Barbara Webster, as well as the Knoxville Modern Quilt Guild.
Ratliff’s quilt, “Vintage Tied-Tie Quilt,” was “made by my grandmother, possibly in the 1940s,” Ratliff stated in the program. “The center tie has the initial ‘B’ for her last name and my maiden name ‘Blanc.’ The silk ties are ‘crazy’ quilted, and it’s tied with yarn to secure the layers.”
“I had ‘sew’ much fun stitching this quilt together for my husband’s birthday,” Ratliff said about her “VW Bus” quilt. “He is a retired commercial contractor and started his career in a VW bus.”
Craddick’s quilt is a “traditional wedding ring designed quilt made by my grandmother, Marguerite Lucille Bowers (nee Witwer), 19115-2010),” Craddick stated. “She hand-pieced the quilt when she was 15 years old in 1932 (stitched into quilt top) and quilted this piece when she was 21 years old … I slept under this quilt every time I spent the night at her house, and it bears the ‘marks and tears’ of being used and loved.”
Reed Doyle’s “When Paris Learned to Play” quilt “resulted from a quilting class this novice quilter signed up for on a whim to fill time over the 2025 summer,” she said. The ‘French Rose’ pattern was completed with machine appliqued flowers.”
