How often do you have a Quilt Show in your guild?
 

Our guild has had two wonderful quilt shows which have been two years apart. what are your thoughts on how often they should be held. Every two years or three years apart. The money raised helps support our guild in speakers and other activities, but the shows are a lot of work. We will be voting on this but I just would like to get some of your thoughts.

In my area, there are several quilt shows in surrounding cities and towns. They are all put on every two years. Yes, they are a lot of work, but so much fun to go to.

Can you give me pros and cons of two vs. three years please?

Our guild does one every two years. People know when to look to the information and we do a raffle quilt in conjunction with the show, Yes it is a lot of work but the up side is the money for good programs. Every three years makes it harder for your followers' to keep track. Another guild in a nearby town has theirs the year we do not so it works well for the area.

one guild, which is quite large, puts on a show every year. my other guild is every two years as the nearby communities also have shows. this allows the $$ to be spread evenly in the communities that don't have many residents.
i would not like a 3-year schedule.

Our guild which has 113 members, most over 60 years old, puts on a show every 3rd year....and it's a massive, exhausting undertaking for so many of us with physical limitations.

Jan in VA

Can your group produce enough quilts in two years to create a good show?
Would there be too many if it was a 3 yr spread?

ITA for those attending it is probably easier to keep track of an every 2 yr schedule.
And too, it might be easier to keep your Guild Members interested if it is alternate years.
With so far between for a 3 yr spread, it might be hard to get the motivation back up to make it happen

Maybe instead of thinking of how much work the show is ...
... perhaps consider what can be done to make the work easier and more manageable for those involved.

If the show's purpose is as a fundraiser ...
... then perhaps considerations should be given towards other ways of making the $$
...... or reducing the budgetary requirements.

I belong to 3 guilds - large, medium, and small (just like Goldilocks). Each one has a quilt show on a 2-year schedule. The smallest guild (around 30 members) had an annual show until a few years ago, when we voted to change to once every 2 years. It is still a lot of work, and like Tartan I would gladly change to a 5-year schedule. This year it stormed on the day of the show, and we had fewer than 50 paid admissions (but we still made money with the auctions and sales). We accept quilts from the community (no charge to display them) and we have not had problems coming up with enough quilts every 2 years. The arguments that were given in favor of keeping to the one-a-year schedule were that the people in the community would be used to coming every year and would forget about the show if it were held every two years, and that the show was our big money maker. The arguments in favor of a one-every-two-years schedule were that it was a lot of work, and we could (and did) find other ways to raise money (sales of excess donated fabric and sewing supplies, proceeds used to buy batting for comfort quilts).

We are a small group of 30 people, but less than half of that is active and involved in what we do. We have a small quilt show every year at our public library. The quilts hang for about a month. Our guild does a challenge of wall hangings and we have a peoples choice award. We have a "social" at the end. There is usually 35-30 quilts. We also enter area shows that are open to the public. We also have a county fair where most of the quilts entered are from out guild. We also enter area quilt shows. I think it is important to show your work once in awhile, regardless of your ability level, as it gives you a chance to show other people what you are happy with, and it pushes you to get better at techniques.

Our guild is 29 years old and over 200 strong. We put on one show per year, it is open to non guild members for a fee of $5 per quilt. Members do not pay a fee to enter quilts. This year we had close to 500 quilts entered. Between the admission fee, raffle quilt, quilters boutique, and silent auction. we covered all cost for the show, and made enough to cover all our expenses for next year, this includes buying batting and backing for charity quilts, renting our meeting hall, educational events, and other small expenses. Everyone helps from the teenage girls who come in to help set up and take down, to our 80 plus year old members who do silent demo's during the show. Our show is always the first weekend in October, our meetings are the last Wed of each month. At the Oct. meeting we get committee reports and start making plans for next years show. We work on our show all year long. It is a lot of work but we all have a good time. Every member is encouraged to enter at least one quilt.

I currently belong to 3 quilt groups/guilds. The state guild puts on a yearly quilt show. However there is also another state guild for Southern AZ [I don't belong to that one] that also puts on a yearly quilt show.

My local, not state affiliated guild has just started putting on shows every 2 years, our second one will be 2014.

The faith based group does not have a quilt show but has a distribution nights. The Saturday before the actual worship area is decorated with many of the quilts, so that they are up for the Sunday services. Then the distribution night is on that Tuesday. This is where the quilts are given out to the various groups that receive the donations.

The guild in Rapid City puts on a quilt show every year in the spring. In the early fall there is another quilt show put on in Hill City every year, and at some point Custer also has a show every year.

We do every 3 years. It is just too much work to do more often. And this way, there are enough quilts.

It is a church pew show, so it somewhat demands traditional bed quilts. There are only a few places to hang small quilts or art quilts that do not drape. (That kept me from entering last year)

The Guild I belong to here in San Antonio has a show in the odd years and an auction in the even years. There are 250+ members. Very active guild with tons of things to interest just about everyone.

We have a guild of 130 members and have a show every three years. Our latest show was two weeks ago and we had 400 quilted items displayed, 163 were large bed quilts. We had over 1000 admissions over two days, a quilter's boutique, quilt appraiser, demos, Northcott challenge, 15 vendors, lunch room and mini draws. We start planning for our next show as soon as the present one is over. Our thoughts are that we wouldn't have enough large quilts to display if we tried to hold it every year and that our membership couldn't handle it either as a good show is a lot of work.

I was just speaking to the truckee meadows guild president this morning and they are going to a two year plan begining now. So our next one won't be until 2015. There is a few here in northern Nevada and I believe they are going to have one in carson city on the off years to ours.
It is kind of sad though, I really enjoy the fall show each year as part of my routine. I guess that is progress.

Funny you should ask. I'm just now trying to recover from our show today. Our group of about 30 have done 2 shows 2 years apart. I'm sure we couldn't manage every year. We do it in conjunction with a church who hosts a craft/vendor show at the same time. We charge no admission and hosted about 500 visitors today.
this is a picture from the last show. Haven't downloaded the pictures from today. This is about 1/2 the quilts. Filled the church pews on both sides.

our guild has one every other year!!!!

I belong to three in my area, which is in outlying counties, aka country..
We do one every other year and then the others do theirs the same.
Bu when we do it, we do it big.....And we always have money for Quilters Like Bonnie Hunter and Debbie Maddy etc to come give classes.
In a way I am glad so I to go to other quilt shows around Texas and Oklahoma too.

Thank you for all your responses. I know having a show is a great undertaking but they do bring in funds for the guild to allow them to do many things.