Stitching a Close-Knit Community: The Delectable Mountain Quilters Guild
by Daniel Greeson
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Art with Altitude.
The Delectable Mountain Quilters Guild started in 1994 with just seven women and a shared love of quilting. In the early days, meetings rotated between Steamboat, Hayden and Craig. “They’d meet in a church basement, or here or there—wherever they could find a place to meet,” says Hedy Davis, the Delectable Mountain Quilters Guild’s current president. When the Steamboat Springs Community Center opened in 2008, it became the group’s permanent home.
Thirty years later, the Guild has grown to 72 members, but the sense of connection is still strong. The group convenes for monthly meetings and smaller, once-a-week sewing sessions on Tuesday mornings, allowing for flexibility amid busy schedules. “If you can make it, come, you know? I mean, we all have busy lives,” Hedy says.
Prominent Guild members include Jackie Grimaldi, Madeleine Vail, and David Taylor—three of whom showed their work in the Art of the Quilt exhibit at the Steamboat Art Museum in 2020. Vail’s barn quilt also won the Grand Champion Ribbon at the 2023 Routt County Fair. “Her work is absolutely stunning,” Hedy says.
Each year, the Guild holds a President’s Challenge to encourage member creativity. “This year, the challenge is to take a traditional quilt block, cut out the pieces, and rearrange them into a new block,” Hedy says. Entries were submitted in April. “Everyone tends to keep their design under wraps for the big reveal,” she adds.
Past challenges have included A River Runs Through It, which asked members to depict a scene inspired by the Yampa River. In 2023, the challenge was a 24-by-24-inch wall hanging that included 20 specific items—“a button, a piece of lace, a bead, the color red, a letter,” Hedy recalls. “It was really interesting to see what everybody came up with.”
The Guild maintains a strong culture of charity, making and presenting over 40 Veterans Quilts through the local VFW and donating quilts to support victims of Hurricane Helene in 2024.
As the quilting world evolves, the members of the Guild embrace new faces and techniques. “We do have a number of younger people who have joined, and it’s so nice to see the younger ones taking an interest in this,” Hedy says. “They’ll come up with, ‘Oh, I saw this technique on YouTube.’ We learn from them, too.”
For newcomers considering quilting, Hedy offers advice and encouragement. “Try to find a local guild and join, because quilters generally are very helpful to one another,” she says. “Most quilters are very friendly and are more than willing to help those getting started.”
For the members of the Delectable Mountain Quilters Guild, each quilt represents shared memories and conversations from the group’s many meetups and community events. After 30 years, the Guild is still stitching together close friendships—one quilt at a time.
Elevate the Arts: View the Delectable Mountain Quilters Guild’s barn quilts at the following locations this summer:
• Casey’s Pond Senior Living Com-
munity—through mid June
• Tracks and Trails Museum, Yampa—
mid June—August 1
• Routt County Fairgrounds—Routt
County Fair (August 12–16, 2025) DG
