| Asheville Quilt Guild Our mission is to preserve and advance the tradition and art of quilting
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Guild History
Dorothy Tresner Award Recipients
The award was established in 1992 and named for its first recipient. This award is presented each year at the December meeting to an Asheville Quilt Guild member for long-term commitment and devotion to the art of quilting.
Asheville Quilt Guild’s Past Presidents
Our Guild Presidents serve for one year. Attached is a list of all presidents to date, starting with our first President, Barbara Swinea in 1988.
Our Beginning
Asheville Quilt Guild History—1988 and 1989 By Barbara Swinea, Charter Member
It was 1987 and after talking for months about starting a quilt guild, Linda Cantrell said the words at the right time to Barbara Swinea. By the end of the evening we had 20 people signed up to join in a class taught by Barbara. After months of work and discussions we held our first meeting at A.B. Tech Campus. There were 65 women there the first night. The dues were $12 and stayed at that for many years. In order to give us some working capital, we initiated a one- time fee of $5. That too is still in place. Our Treasury had a start of $750 for the first year.
Our members gave free workshops with Linda Cantrell being the first (remember she also made our first raffle quilt). The others that year were: Jill Chirgotis, Ruth Flanagan, Marilyn Munson, Peggy Genung, Ingrid Courtney, Mary Keene, and Barbara Swinea. We also had a guest speaker from Greensboro, Dick Dyer, who did the lecture gratis and had a funny talk on gadgets.
We had a newsletter, named disPatch by Leigh Anne Tierney and written by Jodie Stutchbury. The city of Asheville printed it for us gratis.
To get us attention, we approached WLOS and their weatherman, Ken Bostic, and asked for his neckties. These ties were being donated by viewers so we made two wall hangings—one going to WLOS and one going to A.B. Tech, and it turned into a nice bit of PR. We had our first bus trip to Symposium in Winston-Salem. There were monthly drawings of quilt blocks and later a fabric challenge with the quilts being in an exhibit hung at the Folk Art Center.
We had no library to start but donated quilt books to Pack Library. In February of 89 we set up our own library.
Our Community Project (completed in 1989) was to make quilts for the residents of St. Dunstans a home for mentally challenged adults.
We were incorporated in November of 1988 as a non-profit with a charter to give exhibits to the community and share our knowledge of quilting.
The Asheville Quilt Competition and Exhibit was held at the Mayflower Bldg (an empty warehouse downtown) during Bele Chere.