Quilts weave together art, history and community

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when it comes to soaking in the vibrancy of an expertly crafted quilt, even photographs don’t do it justice.

“People don’t realize, but seeing a quilt in person is nothing like seeing a picture of it,” local quiltmaker Karen Kindle said.

On Sept. 20 and 21, veteran quilters and the crafting curious alike will have the chance to view up close the work of many of the area’s most accomplished quilters at the Years of Traditions and Beyond 2025 quilt show.

The event will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Tompkins Cortland Community College Field House in Dryden.

The quilt show will include 15 vendors selling everything from barn quilts to wooden quilt jewelry to fabric, patterns and quilted clothes.

One hundred quilts will be available for silent auction, and there is a raffle for one special quilt: a “Flying to the Stars” show quilt. 

The Iron Quilter competition will feature quilters showing off their talents in real time, and the quilts they make for the contest will be auctioned off, as well.

“It’s very inspirational,” said Cyndi Slothower, a member of the Tompkins County Quilters Guild and co-owner of retail shop Quilter’s Corner, of attending the show. “You think, ‘I really love that color combination,’ or ‘This is a pattern I would like to try.’”

Quilter’s Corner

In downtown Ithaca, one store is the center of many local quilters’ creative universe. Quilter’s Corner, located on State Street, has been in business for 30 years and sells everything a quilter could need while also offering repair services for sewing machines.

“I walk in and my mouth drops open, most of the time,” Brigid Hubberman, local quilter, said. “It’s kind of an oasis.”

Slothower grew up in Ithaca and started quilting right around the time of the United States Bicentennial celebrations. “It kicked off with the quilting revival, and it’s been my thing ever since,” she said.

Slothower will be one of the vendors at the upcoming event. She also has quilts submitted to the show.

The Guild’s Roots

Hubberman said that, like Slothower and many others, her quilting journey began during the U.S. Bicentennial, when Ithaca held a huge quilt show that captured the imagination of many would-be quilters.

The group of women who organized the quilt show had formed the Tompkins County Quilters Guild a little over a year before the show, yet they recruited 600 volunteers for the event, which ended up attracting 8,000 people.

The initial group of about 10 women grew to include 78 people, becoming the Tompkins County Quilters Guild, which is still very active today.

Hubberman wanted to sew a family quilt, and she came to quilting for the same reason most do, she said: “It’s always what’s drawn people to making quilts — that it’s warm and beautiful, and you can be yourself. You can create something that is uniquely you.”

Generational Quilting

“I’ve been quilting with my grandmother since I was very young,” said Linda Linton VanNederynen, who co-owns Quilter’s Corner with Slothower.

VanNederynen grew up on a local dairy farm, where she learned how to quilt from her grandmother. “I would practice on my grandmother’s paisleys, and she would inspect my stitches and say, ‘Let’s do it again, but better,’” she said with a smile.

“We helped hang the first quilt show at Ithaca High School in 1976,” she said. “I remember sitting at the big quilting frame with [my grandmother] and her friends at the church and sometimes the grange.”

Her grandmother was such an accomplished quilter that she even travelled the state to be a judge at shows.

“She influenced a lot of quilters in the area and generated the population of the guild quite well after that first show,” VanNederynen said. “She would bring me bits of fabric for my own projects when I was young, and she worked from a lot of scraps and put things together. She was very good at that and influenced me on my journey.”

After she had her children, VanNederynen was faced with a crossroads in her life. She was considering either getting her degree in education, becoming a midwife or becoming a business owner.

“And [my grandmother] influenced me enough and left me some finances to start this shop with four other women,” she said. “Her influence on me showed up a lot in this business.”

A Thriving Guild

Kindle took a small break from being active in the guild during the COVID-19 pandemic but has been attending meetings more regularly lately. She said she’s happy to see that it is thriving.

“I’m happy to see that there are younger people in the guild now, people in their 20s, 30s and 40s,” she said. “It’s so important to get younger people involved in the craft. … It will die out otherwise.”

Slothower also had glowing praise for the organization. “I think it’s a really fabulous guild,” she said. “There’s all skill levels, all age levels, men as well as women, which is nice, too.”

She said she appreciates the “show and tell” aspect of the meetings, as they can be a motivating factor. “People are so encouraging, so I think it gives people a boost in their creativity,” she said.

Quilting as Art

What sets quilting apart from other types of crafts and art?

“It’s a really diverse artform,” Kindle said. From traditional to contemporary, whether you have a talent for painting fabric or envisioning elaborate designs, there’s a place for all talents to be applied to quilting.

Case in point: Kindle was inspired by her love of biology to make a quilt that displays the beauty of evolution and biodiversity.

“What story is more fundamental than the story of how life started and how it became more complex over time?” she asked.

Looking at a display of fossils during a visit to the Smithsonian, she had an idea. “I thought a spiral is just such a great form for illustrating the concept of time,” she said. “I found this book on spiral quilts, and thought to do this project I’d been thinking about, and so that’s how I decided to get started.”

From its roots in the Bicentennial quilt revival to the thriving guild and shops that keep the tradition alive today, quilting in Tompkins County has always been about more than fabric and thread.

The upcoming show is not just a display of skill, but a celebration of how quilting stitches the past, present and future into something beautiful and enduring.

The quit show is a benefit fundraiser for the quilter’s guild, a not-for-profit organization, with an entry donation of $10 for adults. Children up to age 18 are free.