Downtown businesses decorated with cozy quilts

For scores of participants and quilt admirers, walking down Main Street in Polson this February offers the chance to think about the warm and cuddly memories of life and peer into the textured stories to be told by the fiber artist whose time is memorialized in their colorful and intricate work.

Quilters participating in this year’s 15th annual All in Stitches Quilt Walk Around Polson spent untold hours creating their artwork before seeing them displayed in a variety of storefront windows lining downtown.

Quilting is a lifestyle and part of that lifestyle means that the 33 entrants spent months of contentment creating each piece of quilted art. Some designed their own piece, others follow patterns, said Susan Brown, All in Stitches manager.

Quilters have many different reasons for creating each piece, she said.

Some artists create quilts as a hobby. Others make them as gifts, to showcase a series of life events, as a memory or to commemorate travels, she said.

Some quilts are made from special fabrics; others have photos. Still others are created from items precious to family members or friends.

But the quilt show displays another aspect of quilting, one that is forged from a common love for the art and craft and one gained through friendship.

Along with individual quilts, Brown said quilt groups do a considerable amount of community outreach.

All in Stitches quilters make quilts they give to a Ronan youth home and a women’s shelter. They also make teddy bears for a foster care program.