If you're a quilter or if you just love quilting or if you like to sleep under a quilt, tonight's the night. Seventy-six of the most magnificent brand new, never-been-on-a-bed-before quilts will go up for bid at the Holiday Quilt Show & Auction at Little America Hotel.
When the auctioneer's last gavel is banged, upward of a quarter million dollars will have been raised for medical research and improved patient care at LDS Hospital.The women of the Deseret Foundation who run the event are optimistic that yet another record will be set tonight in the elite Highest Price Paid for Just One Quilt category. Two years ago, a Joyce Tolman/Alaine Nelson quilt went for $25,000. So that's the price to beat.
With yet another Tolman/Nelson design in this year's show, alongside numerous other king-sized contenders from the likes of the Maple Mountain Quilters, the Crazy Quilters, the Quilt Addicts, the Sandy Stitchers, the Bountiful Ridges, Ties That Bind, Nimble Thimbles, and -- my favorite -- Sew 'n Sews, can $30,000 and beyond be far off?
Behind every quilt and every quilt club, of course, are dozens, even hundreds, of quilters; and behind all these quilters are just as many excellent excuses/reasons for taking time out from the daily grind to sit down and tie, bat, thread, pattern, piece, applicate and so forth.
If you're a quilter, you'll understand.
Eunice Young is a quilter. She understands. She has worked on three of the quilts entered in tonight's lineup, including her favorite, "Unbroken Circle," which she re-created after seeing one like it in a magazine.
If it weren't for quilting, Eunice will tell you, she doesn't know where she'd be. Probably walking the streets talking to herself is her best guess.
She took up what she calls her "therapy" 17 years ago, just after her husband died, and in the years since she has made and donated quilts to everything and everyone, including her seven children and 17 of her 20 grandchildren.
"Three to go," she says, "and then they're all covered."
Pun not intended.
And what a way to go and what a crowd to run with. It is Eunice's educated opinion that you could search the earth and not find a nicer, more selfless group of people than quilters.
In general, she says quilters are extremely upbeat, good-natured, and generous. Also, they are very good sewers and uncommonly patient.
Ever heard of a brawl at a quilting bee?
Get around a bunch of quilters for an afternoon and just try and go home miserable.
"You throw out your bread," says Eunice, "and it comes back buttered."
Even at $25,000 or $30,000, it's a bargain.
The average-size quilt takes 1,000 hours to make. For bigger sizes, more elaboration and intricate design, add more hours.
Some of tonight's quilts represent 3,000 hours, maybe even 4,000.
And then there are the materials.
People who make Nikes and Reeboks in Seoul would gasp at the injustice.
Hardly anybody works this cheap.
"Might as well give them away," shrugs Eunice, who this past year received the Utah Quilt Guild's Silver Thimble Award for her many years of dedicated service. "It feels better."
Or better yet, might as well put them up for adoption, which is what tonight's Quilt Show & Auction is all about.
Before the night is through, 76 quilts will have new homes and a hospital will have a welcome fund transfusion.
Amazing things can happen one stitch at a time. Pun intended.
Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Please send e-mail to (benson@desnews.com) and faxes to 801-237-2527.