Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate and inspire the public about the art of quilting and to enhance the cultural and economic vitality of the schools and community of Sisters and Central Oregon. They accomplish this through a series of annual events, most notably the largest outdoor Quilt Show in the world held on the second Saturday of July. The 41st annual event will be July 9-10. www.sistersoutdoorquiltshow.org.

Quiltmaker Leotie Richards will host her new solo art quilt exhibit, American Folk Heroes, premiering at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show.

Richards became enamored with textiles while working as an art director for a major retail chain. After 20 years of designing graphics and textiles for retail stores, she retired to Sisters and found that her graphic design skills could be readily applied to art quilting. Studying intently for three years in various workshops with Jean Wells, Sue Benner and Rosalie Dace, she became adroit with various fabrication techniques and began to experience a high degree of joy in her creative process with textiles.

In 2014, she conceived and began a series of portraits that feature American Folk Heroes, The first four portraits were featured along with retrospective work in solo shows at the QuiltWorks in Bend in July 2015, and the Sisters Library in November 2015. She is continuing development of this series and is scheduled to present 12 of these works in a special exhibit at The Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show and at the NW Quilt Expo in Portland, September 22-24.

Richards greatly enjoys portraiture but also produces abstract work as part of the small quilt group called Sundance. Her frame-mounted abstract works were shown at QuiltWorks in Bend in December and January and will be featured in another Sundance group show at Sotheby’s in downtown Bend in September.