Stitching stories : The Springville Museum of Art's quilt show blends craft and art

In the language of quilts, a few stitches are easily worth a thousand words.

Stitching, patterns, color combinations and embellishments create works of art. But they also tell stories, as demonstrated by the 33rd annual Quilt Show at the Springville Museum of Art.

Sharon Wright's "It's Grown on Me," for example, contains vivid depictions of southern Utah landscape, but it also details Wright's own journey of discovery as she found beauty in the desert after moving to St. George several years ago.

Gayle V. Hansen's "2002 Piecemaker Times & Seasons" captures the changing seasons, but it also talks of her love of challenge. The quilt took 2 1/2 years of work as Hansen not only pieced together the quilt but then added ribbon embroidery, beads and decorative stitchery to enhance it.

Sheryl Gillian's "Embracing Passion" pays tribute to the works of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt but also explores the "tension between hard straight lines and sinuous curves."

Janet Carpenter's "Hiding Place" not only captures the whimsy of a mythical creature but also memorializes all the years her family has played the "Dungeons & Dragons" game.

Annette Haws used thousands and thousands of small, hand-stuffed berries on her quilt, each made with love for her daughter to fulfill "Betsy's Promise."

Helen L. Brutsch attended a workshop that taught a "sew-slash-sew" method. It "stretched her traditional mind" as she created "Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee."

Every quilt in the show has more to it than a first glance might indicate, says Francine Berrett, member of the board of the Utah Valley Quilt Guild and co-curator of the show. "I look at some of them and wonder, 'How can brains think like that?' They are absolutely gorgeous."

The show features traditional quilts as well as art quilts. "There's so much variety," says Berrett. "The closest we came to having the same are three bargello quilts and two "stack-'n'-whack" quilts. But you look at those and they are so different from each other."