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South Carolina quilter Sue Swan works on a piece in her basement quilting studio.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
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Sue Swan sits at her long-arm Bernina sewing machine. Since retiring more than 10 years ago, she’s adopted quilting as her full-time job.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
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Quilters show off their work among peers at a meeting of the Prickly Fingers Quilters Guild in Anderson. The guild cohosts the biennial Anderson Area Quilt Show, featuring more than 200 quilts on display, in July.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
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Quilter Renee Smith works in an artistic style to create quilt designs such as this one, modeled off of a family photo.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
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Renee Smith often gives her quilts as gifts with extra-special meaning to loved ones.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
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The Anderson Area Quilt Show is July 17–18, 2026, at the Anderson Civic Center.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
Sue Swan grabs a quilt from the stack in her bedroom and unfurls it. As the fabric rises and falls, the colors shift like a kaleidoscope. There's a block with waving flowers set against a polka-dotted sky. Strips with pink and turquoise stripes. Purple-toned florals. Swirls and whirls that spiral from red to blue-green.
Study this twin-bed-sized work of art closely, and you'll notice the tiny stitches holding the layers of this quilt—front, back and batting—together. With her long-arm Bernina sewing machine, Swan stitched free-motion circles within circles. Straight lines and swirls. Loops and fans and curlicues.
Since Swan retired over 10 years ago, she's adopted quilting as her full-time job. If she isn't attending a meeting of the Prickly Fingers Quilters Guild in Anderson or the Lake and Mountain Quilters Guild in Seneca, she might be in her basement quilting studio, piecing together a new project on the design wall. Or you'll find her in the living room, hand-stitching the latest block-of-the-month from folk-art quilt designer Sue Spargo.
Quilts are tucked away in closets and spread over every bed in Swan's house. On the walls hang art quilts with a zoo's worth of animals drawn with thread: toucans, squirrels, goats, a kangaroo. Even an ocean with a whale and 77 tiny pink shrimp.
Swan has gifted her work to children and grandchildren. She's made quilts to celebrate new life and commemorate those who are gone. Her tuxedo cat, Riley, often curls up for a nap in the bedroom, princess-and-the-pea style, on a mattress 10 quilts thick.
Swan has mastered free-motion quilting, ruler quilting and English paper piecing, but there will always be one conundrum she can't overcome.
"I have everything I need except time," Swan says. The advanced techniques she's fond of take a lot of it, and there's always something new to learn.
Plus, this year, the pressure's really on: The biennial Anderson Area Quilt Show is in July. Swan hopes to complete several of her current works in progress by the deadline—if she can ignore the distraction of the next project that always seems to be calling her name.
Wrapped in a story
Quilting is centuries old, an art form born from the necessity for warmth. The craft found its way to Europe during the Crusades, and early American settlers brought the skill with them to the New World. The wealthy bought colorful pieces imported from faraway places, but everyone else saved cast-off fabric scraps—a bit of an outgrown flour sack dress, the torn fragment of a cotton work shirt—and stitched them together by hand. These bits and pieces formed a story, a collection of memories families could wrap themselves in.
Quilting styles and technology have changed, but for modern-day quilters like Swan and other members of the Prickly Fingers Quilt Guild, the sentiment remains.
There's the excitement of planning a new project or discovering a new fabric store. The satisfaction of uninterrupted time at the sewing machine. But nothing compares to the joy of sharing the finished product with a grandchild who lives overseas, a friend who recently lost her husband, or a daughter who just had a daughter of her own.
Better than a blue ribbon
"What the quilt was designed for was to put around you and feel the hug," says Renèe Smith, another Prickly Fingers member.
Smith isn't a fan of precise measurements, so she leans toward art quilts that allow her to stick with whole and half inches. While traditional quilts rely on geometric designs pieced in blocks, art quilts use colors and patterns to portray an image. Art quilts with hand embroidery or raw fabric edges are often reserved for wall hangings, where they don't have to endure the rough and tumble of everyday life.
Many of Smith's designs are inspired by her family, such as the Frida-Kahlo-in-Converse-shoes design she made for her art-loving daughter, or the quilted wall hanging of another daughter's Facebook profile picture.
For this year's quilt show, Smith plans to enter a replica of her favorite photo of her granddaughter. After converting the photo to a pattern, Smith paper-pieced two identical quilts. One she gifted to her granddaughter on the child's seventh birthday. The other will be on display at the Anderson Civic Center this month, where quilt show attendees' votes will determine how this piece stacks up against other entries.
After the show, though, Smith plans to take the quilt back home and hang it in the living room, where, every time she sees it, she'll go back in her mind to the day her granddaughter was born: Rushing to her daughter's house. The paramedics on one phone and the midwife on another. Her granddaughter born so fast that the pot of coffee Smith started when she arrived hadn't even finished brewing.
The gift of a healthy baby girl. The joy of holding her for the first time.
A blue ribbon might be nice, but it can't beat that.
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Get there
Anderson Area Quilt Show
More than 200 quilts created by members of the Electric City and Prickly Fingers quilters guilds will be on display, along with craft vendors, raffles and a silent auction.
When: July 17, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and July 18, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Where: Anderson Civic Center, 3027 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., Anderson
Tickets: $7 per day to attend
More info: andersonscquilters.org