Prior Fairs

Thanks to everyone who visited our shows.  Special thanks to all the Guild members who provide show quilts, items for sale, help with set-up, take-down and take a turn being in the booth and welcoming the fair goers!

Our Favorite Holiday/Celebration – August 2023

Looking forward to 2024!

Scrappy Quilts – No Fabric Left Behind
August 2022

Some wonderful photos.  Thanks to all our great volunteers and visitors.

 

Women’s Voices – Celebrate the 19th Amendment – August 2021

Some wonderful photos.  Thanks to all our great volunteers and visitors.

Guild members made a 12″ potholder style quilt that expresses what they are passionate about. These were hung up in the tent at the fair. Some examples below:

We will feature our quilt celebrating the 19th Amendment in Massachusetts. (quilt is 76″ x 76″)

And additional amazing quilts will be on display.

Below are the guild instructions for making the “Night Sky” quilt. This is a donated, precut kit.  The block packets were distributed at the guild meeting for the members to take home and sew. 

Night Sky Block Instructions

Quilt Package – Photo and Assembly Instructions

 

Farm Fresh Quilts

August 9-11, 2019

The 2019 Bolton Fair was a wonderful success, weather-wise and guild-wise!

Thanks to all of you who made it happen:

• The lenders of show quilts: Christa Nee, Kathy Dugan, Vicky Haskell, Jody Koch, Susan Romanelli, Mary Pratt, Joanne Wagner, as well as myself.
• The Quilters who made items for sale: Mary Pratt, Ann Heffernan, Jody Koch, Christa Nee, Debby Fink, Christine Rhodes, Cindy Jobin, Carol McGargal, and me.
• The hostesses and demonstrators at the fair: Carol McGargal, Kathy Dugan, Veronica Rose and her daughter Katie Hopta, Amanda Jones, Debby Fink, Christa Nee, Jody Koch, Christine Rhodes, Cindy Jobin, Ann Heffernan, Andie Ordung, Deb Robichaud, Sharon Johnson, Jackie Manley, Susan Romanelli, Janice Boutotte, Sarah Hopta, Rita, Distefano-French, and myself.
• Thanks to the set up and tear down crews, Ann, Kathy, Carol and my husband Chris Broders who set up the tent display ropes and poles tables and equipment, took it all down and managed to get it all into our truck. Thank you, Chris, as well for all the loading up of the “for sale” items into the square program and for managing the financial reports for the guild post fair. Thanks to Debby and Howard Fink for storing the fair equipment during the year in their barn.
• Thank you to all who donated fabric and made charm packs. We made 119 and sold 47 at $5.00 each or 3/$10.00.
• Thanks to our guild being at the fair we may have two to three new members as well as banking a nice fundraiser for the guild.
• Thank you to Sub-Chairs Kathy Dugan and Carol McGargal and to all you guild members who gave us support. Christa Nee is next year’s chairwoman. Please give her all the support you have shown me and more!

Below is the string quilt created by the whole guild and “tied” at the fair.

Geometry and Illusion – August 10 -12, 2018

Hope to see you at the next Bolton Fair, August 10-12, 2018. If you purchase a charm pack (5″ squares) at the Bolton Fair click here to see some of  the items and the patterns.

Black & White Sampler Quilt, Twin Bed Size 64” X 82” Donated by the Guild to the Bolton Fair Raffle (All cotton, machine gentle wash warm, dry low heat)

 

Quilts for All Seasons – August 11-13, 2017

Enjoyed seeing all of you at the Bolton Fair August 2017!!

Instructions for the I Spy Quilt:   (click here)

A Flower Garden of Quilts – August 2016

The fair was August 13-16, 2016.  The theme was a “Flower Garden of Quilts”.  Thanks to everyone who stopped by,  all our wonderful volunteers, everyone who provided items for sale and the whole guild for their support.  Even with the heat many people stopped by and enjoyed the quilts and even learned some new sewing techniques. Many can be seen on our photo pages.

Stars – 2015

The Bolton fair was August 14-16, 2015.  The theme for the fair was “Stars” and the guild created a queen size quilt to show at the fair.

Thanks to everyone who came and volunteered – help with the quilt, help organize, help in the tent (and get a fair pass for the day).

Janice and Bonnie made a quilt, “Straight Furrows”, which was donated to the Bolton Fair Committee (In the name of Mothertown Quilters Guild) to be included in the fair’s “Rainy Day Raffle”.

A thank you for the opportunity the fair provides us to meet and educate the public in the art of quilting. They also provide us with the tent, tables and chairs at no cost.

Bolton Fair – Patriotism in Cloth – 2014

Mothertown Guild had a beautiful booth this year at the Bolton Fair. “Patriotism in Cloth” was our theme and included a great display of quilts both patriotic and historic. Everyone stopping by the tent gave a smile of delight, including the President of the Bolton Fair, Rose Darden. We met some wonderful and appreciative folks, met some possible future guild members and some happy sewing youngsters making flag pillow’s or pincushions and patriotic ribbons. For the first time this year we had a nice selection of items and quilts for sale and indeed sold a few items including a large quilt “Yellow Ribbons” which was made up of blocks made by the guild members. Central focus of the guild booth display was a quilt made with the combined efforts of the Bolton Fair Committee, a beautiful World War II Victory quilt, which will be on display at the September guild meeting.

A quilt was also donated to the Bolton Fair Rainy Day Raffle, a new addition to the fair to make a bit of extra money to support the fair, a volunteer effort by a group outside the Bolton Fair Committee. The quilt was donated to the raffle in the name of “Mothertown Quilters Guild” and was very much appreciated, indeed the organizer said it was the most valuable item in the raffle! The winner (who bought many, many raffle tickets!) came right over to our tent to thank us for making and donating such a beautiful quilt! A pink and white, twin size butterfly quilt.

We wanted thank the generosity of the Bolton Fair, providing free of charge to us each year, a wonderful tent, tables and chairs as well as the opportunity to share quilting with the public and let them see what our local guild is and does!

Bolton Fair 2013

The fair had the best weekend weather and the biggest crowds ever and our guild was there as part of it all!  There were many repeat visitors from the past four years of the MTQ booth, both visiting the beautiful quilt display, sewing with us, and using the expanded children activities.  Indeed folks look for our booth now!  A great success with fun had by everyone involved, the booth committee (deep gratitude to you) as well as guild visitors who stopped by.

“Log Cabin Quilts, An American Favorite” was the theme this year, with guild members sporting handmade, mini “Log Cabin” pins and necklaces.  We were able to hang a few large quilts this year, to a beautiful effect, along with the many sized versions of Log Cabin blocks and settings in quilts from as early as an antique quilt from the Civil War era, and quilts of 30s, 70s, 80s, 90s and the 21^st century!  One member brought a dollhouse size, one room log cabin for display, complete with a bed made up with a mini Log Cabin quilt!  On loan from the West Boylston Historical Society, we were able to display the “Mothertown Quilt”.  Made in 2004 by one of our own members as a fundraiser/raffle for the Lancaster  Library, the quilt is of log cabin blocks, the centers sepia toned old postcards and pictures scanned into the computer and printed on cloth.  The pictures are of the 11 towns represented in the original and second English grants that formed the “Nashaway Plantation” or the Town of Lancaster.  Won by a West Boylston woman, the quilt was donated to her town Historical society, one of the original towns!

The MTQ Booth this year was the best yet.  We had beautiful quilts on display, 13 samples of log cabin blocks, traditional, and unusual and modern variations.  We had and expanded children’s activity area this year, adding to the felt board (felt logs to make Log Cabin blocks) we had Lincoln logs to build log cabins,  four log cabin blocks to color and laminated log cabin blocks to arrange in the various settings for a quilt.  Adults and children, male and female, enjoyed sewing small log cabin pincushions.  We had hand quilting demonstrations too, Log Cabin placemats for our Outreach project, and we brought back out the whole cloth quilt that the Civil War ladies practiced hand quilting on for the raffle quilt.

The Log Cabin pattern is an old one, found on the linen wrappings of mummies in Egypt,  ties to  Greek and Roman patterns, Scottish wood inlay and Irish field rotation patterns. We made the pattern “ours” here in the States with our artistic use of scraps to form the pattern.  Made very popular during the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln and his subsequent assassination, these quilts were so popular in the last quarter of the 1800s that State Fairs had whole categories just for Log Cabin quilts!  We all love them just as much today, as our admiring fair going audience demonstrated to us.

Many thanks to the wonderful fair booth committee, booth hostesses, guild visitors, and fair goers, for keeping alive the art and folk craft of piecing, sewing, and quilting at the Bolton Fair!