SOQS Information
About SOQS
The Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show is always held on the second Saturday in July:
49th Annual Show is July 13, 2024
The Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show™ (SOQS) is internationally recognized as the world’s largest outdoor quilt show displaying more than 1300 quilts representing fiber artists from around the world. More than 10,000 visitors from all 50 states and multiple foreign countries flock to Sisters on the second Saturday in July.
Master quilt makers teach classes and workshops during Quilt Week and exhibit their quilts at our annual Quilt Show. In addition, hundreds of quilts are displayed in our “show-and-tell” exhibits—first time quilters, youth, and quilts made by men—throughout the town of Sisters. Quilt exhibitors range in age from 10 to 92 years old, and quilts on display come to us from all over the world.
Many of the quilts on display can be purchased with a portion of the proceeds supporting SOQS, a 501(c)3 non profit organization which produces the annual, free, Quilt Show and fiber arts activities year-round.
This American art and tradition of quilting enriches and enhances the cultural legacy SOQS created and grew in Central Oregon. When it started 47 years ago, there was one quilt shop in Sisters. Central Oregon now boasts a half-dozen shops and a dozen active quilt guilds. SOQS events and activities are a year-round bucket list mecca for quilters and appreciators of fiber arts.
Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show™ is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the art, skill, and heritage of traditional and contemporary quilts and fiber arts, while enhancing the cultural vitality of the community of Sisters and Central Oregon.
We do that through a series of annual events, most notably the largest outdoor Quilt Show in the world held on the second Saturday of July.
The show began when founder, Jean Wells Keenan, hung a dozen quilts made by friends and family along with her own, outside her quilt shop on a Saturday in July. A few more ladies brought their quilts to show, then a few more and a few more. The show became an annual event, hosted by the East of the Cascades quilt guild. As the show gained in size and popularity it outgrew the resources of the guild. In 2003, an Executive Director was hired to manage the show and new events were added including the Around the Block Quilt Walk and Fiber Arts Stroll, Wish Upon a Card and other partnerships with community service groups.
Quilt Show began in 1975; Non-Profit was established in 2005
Attendance: ~10,500 on Quilt Show day
Staff: Executive Director; Part time office staff, and an army of Volunteers!
Economic Impact: $1.7 million and the equivalent of 26 jobs in the Sisters area*
Over 90,000 website hits/year at www.SOQS.org
IRS Non-Profit Tax ID #14-1941732