Utah Quilt Guild Quilt Festival: Beyond fabric and thread

In many ways, creativity is simply response to a challenge.

It works in literature, in art, in musical composition. And it works for quilts.

Consider, for example, several of the special quilt displays that were part of the recent Utah Quilt Guild Quilt Festival, held this year in Midway.

In one of the displays, the challenge was to make a different quilt for every letter of the alphabet. For another, the challenge was to honor 100 years of the Boy Scouts of America — or, at least, sons who have participated in Scouting. A third project challenged quilters to make blocks to raise money for cancer research. And, there was the main quilt show, where the challenge was simply to make a beautiful quilt.

"There are so many ways creativity can be expressed in quilts," says Liz Teerlink, who was in charge of the Alphabet Soup Challenge. "You see it in the choice of colors and fabrics, in the techniques and embellishments. You really see the personality of the quilter."

She got the idea for the alphabet challenge after seeing a show featuring quilts designed around a pack of cards. They asked prominent quilters to each take a card and design a quilt around it.

It was amazing, she says, how different they all were.

"Then, I saw a panel with letters of the alphabet, and thought it would be fun to try that," Teerlink said.

The quilts were all to be 18-by-24 inches in size, and the letter had to show on the front. Other than that, "they could do whatever they wanted.

"The results are just charming," Teerlink said.

Each of the quilters was also asked to give a short summary of what they were trying to do with the quilt.

Bonnie Crysdale, who had the letter 'E,' noted that " 'E' is the most used letter, but few words start with 'E,' and who wants to make an elephant or an eye? It finally clicked. If 'E' is the most abundant letter, we should just have an abundance of interlocking 'E's.' "

'P' was the letter Denise Austin had, and she decided to "celebrate people."

"People are the gatekeepers of this beautiful planet of ours," she wrote. "We can work together to preserve it by celebrating our individuality and appreciating our similarities and differences."