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The 2026 West Virginia Quilt Festival will bring quilters from across the state and beyond to the Cedar Lakes Conference Center in Ripley Sept. 17 to Sept. 19.
Connie Forth, president of the West Virginia Quilters, said it can be hard for the state’s practitioners to get together due to distance and terrain. But the festival’s purpose is to share quilting patterns, techniques and ideas, and cheer each other on.
“We just want everybody to come and enjoy themselves. It’s a lot of eye candy and a lot of good times and a lot of good company,” Forth said.
Forth, who started sewing at age six with her grandmother, said she loves the creativity of quilting.
“Taking something and making something out of it, something that’s useful for myself, for my friends, my family,” she said. “Something I can give to them that they can use and enjoy, or just take care of, or if they want to. But I make stuff usually to be used.”
Quilters and non-quilters alike are welcome to the festival. Forth said the festival is also an opportunity to maintain the history of quilting and welcomes the public to bring in historic examples of patterns and family quilts to be cataloged in a national registry.
“Right now, we’re concentrating on quilts made before 1975. We record everything from the maker, where the maker lived, the fabrics, the materials, the patterns, the threads that were used in the quilt-that’s all documented, and the quilt is photographed,” she said. “That’s uploaded to the Quilt Index, …it’s used as a study from all over the country, even globally, for anyone interested in in textiles.”