‘Quilts of Hospice’ will be exhibited at Wright State’s fourth annual Quilt Show

“Quilt Show: Celebrating Quilt Stories” takes place in the Wright State Student Union Jan. 19 to Jan. 21.

Forty-seven quilts that were created for patients’ rooms at Hospice of Dayton will highlight the fourth annual “Quilt Show: Celebrating Quilt Stories” at Wright State University.

The quilts, made by the Miami Valley Quilters Guild and no longer on display at hospice, will be the centerpiece of the three-day show.

Free and open to the public, the show will be held in the Student Union Apollo Room on Thursday, Jan. 19, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Friday, Jan. 20, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and Saturday, Jan. 21, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“It’s grown quite a bit; we’ve gone from just showing a few quilts to about 100,” said Linda Morgan, administrative specialist in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, which is sponsoring the show. “It gives fiber artists — and specifically quilters — an opportunity to showcase their work.

Through their fabrics, patterns, colors and textures, quilts can be the voice of history, current events and issues. Morgan said the stories behind the quilts are a powerful draw.

“All quilts have stories,” she said. “It can be a personal story or a political story.”

For example, the show will include a quilt of John Crawford III, a 22-year-old African-American shot to death in 2014 by a police officer in a Walmart store in Beavercreek. Crawford had been holding a toy BB gun.

In a tip of the hat to literature, the show will feature a lecture about the novel “Alias Grace,” by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, about the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Upper Canada. Quilting was used throughout that book to tell the story.

The lecture, titled “Women’s History as Patchwork,” will be presented Jan. 19, from 11 a.m. to 12:20 p.m., by Hope Jennings, director of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program.

A tatting quilt produced by the “Friends Tatting Guild of Greene County” will be auctioned off, with the proceeds going toward scholarships. Tatting is a form of lace-making.

Several other quilts will also be auctioned off for scholarships, including quilts inspired by photographs of Southwest plant life and the Grand Canyon as well as “Orange Starburst,” a kaleidoscopic-like quilt.

One stunning exhibit will feature castings of snowflakes. The show will also feature an exhibit of fashion wear from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.