The Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show must go on

Jerry Baldock

Quilters are resilient.

After all, they carried their works of functional art across the Great Plains on the Oregon Trail, through all kinds of hardship on their quest for a new life in Oregon.

Quilters are creative.

Even a global pandemic and the attendant restrictions on public gatherings won’t stop Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show (SOQS) — even if the gathering of the tribe has to be done virtually.

“Not having a show really wasn’t an option,” said SOQS Executive Director Dawn Boyd. “We just had to think how to reinvent — or, as our board chair Jeff (Omodt) says reimagine — what the show is and what it could be.”

In changing circumstances, there were just too many unknowable variables to plan for a scaled-down physical event, and the SOQS board had seen other arts organizations succeed with virtual events. So that’s the course they chose. They just needed to brainstorm what could practically be implemented.

“It was just a lot of diagramming, and different-colored post-it notes,” Boyd recalled. “Technology has helped us so much to be able to do this.”

Quilters are a community.

There was no doubt that the show must go on, that the community of quilters remain connected and that the astonishing legacy of the largest outdoor quilt show in the world be carried on. So the community stepped up.

“There were so many people stepping up to ask how they could help,” Boyd said. “It was really neat to see people who are so eager to help.”

That’s because quilters — and the Sisters community at large — know that SOQS is much more than a show, much more than a major economic driver for Sisters — it’s a real community icon.

“There’s just so much depth in the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show,” Boyd said. “There’s so much connection with the quilters, with the community, with our sponsors.”

That connection is as precious as an heirloom Oregon Trail quilt, and the board, staff and volunteers who make SOQS are determined not only to preserve it, but to burnish it for years to come.

“We’re not letting this stop us,” Boyd said. “And we’re going to keep building from here.”