JOHN DAY — Trowbridge Pavilion at the Grant County Fairgrounds was awash in vibrant patterns of color at the 22nd annual Grant County Quilt Show on May 5 and 6.

Quiltmakers of all ages showcased their work at the event, which featured about 115 quilts on display from 80 quilters from around Grant County.

“It takes a lot of work and it’s not often you get to show everyone your talent, so this is a nice way to display your work and teach people who are interested that they can come and make quilts,” said Kathy Hinton, president of the Grant County Piecemakers Quilt Guild and owner of the Shiny Thimble Quilt Studio, 100 E. Main St., Mt. Vernon.

Among the dozens of quilts hung up in rows inside Trowbridge Pavilion was an ornately patterned gold, brown and red quilt made by Hinton.

“This is a Christmas quilt. I never thought that I would spend the time to make a Christmas quilt, but now that I have, I have to have one on all my beds at Christmastime,” she said. “This is my first Christmas quilt.”

On each day of the quilt show, visitors were able to vote for their favorite quilt and each day had a best in show.

“People who come to look at the quilts will come to look at their favorite, so each day we calculate those votes and there will be a winner on Friday and Saturday, and then we also have a barn challenge,” Hinton said. “All those quilts down there are barns that were pieced together. And you can vote on your favorite one of those. Those are all made in a contest, so whoever wins that will get a big prize, too.”

Mt. Vernon resident Ersela Dehiya, vice president of the Piecemakers Guild, was in charge of the event’s barn challenge, which featured about 15 quilts with different pieces of colored fabric stitched together to make vibrant images of a barn or barns.

“(Quilters) had to do a picture of a barn, with no panels and no embroidery, and it has to be a pieced barn,” Dehiya said. “They had a size: no smaller than 24 inches by 24 inches and no larger than 100 inches by 100 inches.”

On Sunday, May 7, 15 students signed up for a quilt-making lesson put on by the quilt show organizers at Trowbridge Pavilion. The theme or pattern of the quilts made at Sunday’s lesson was called “Simple Solstice,” Hinton said.

“Everybody made their own quilt,” she said. “You could choose a small baby quilt or a larger queen-size quilt. They all made their individual quilt.”

A special section of the show featured Quilts of Valor that will be presented to veterans at a special event at Clyde Holliday Park in Mt. Vernon on Aug. 19 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“So there’s a couple of rows here where the quilts are red, white and blue — patriotic — because our guild, we honor our veterans in Grant County and so we are involved with Quilts of Valor,” Hinton said. “Every year we have a barbecue and we give away about 25 quilts to veterans that live here.”

For more information about the Grant County Piecemakers Quilt Guild, visit tinyurl.com/4hjy3ptb.

The 22nd Annual Grant County Quilt Show bestowed awards in three categories:

People’s Choice Award Friday, May 5: Sally Duncan: Patterns of red, brown, white and tan with the image of a horse in the middle

People’s Choice Award Saturday, May 6: Janice Childress, Mt. Vernon: Multicolored floral and geometric patterns making images of spools of thread

Barn contest: Janice Childress