About the Haywood Quilt Trails Project

The Haywood Quilt Trails project helps Haywood County find and tell our stories by featuring colorful and meaningful quilt squares installed on barns, public buildings, shops, and other appropriate buildings around the community.

Quilts represent a much-loved symbol of comfort, family, heritage, and community, and the blocks on the trail will provide new splashes of color along major roads and in the rural countryside. They Haywood County Quilt Trails (HCQT) project aims to engage the community by providing yet another reason to explore Haywood County and enjoy the surrounding beauty. Vibrant quilt patterns are painted on pre-built wooden squares ranging from two feet to eight feet in size. Cultural and heritage lovers inside and outside the county will experience the fun of locating blocks along the trails and learning the wonderful stories behind site locations and the quilt patterns represented on the blocks.

Some squares are already installed and more are on the way.

The Haywood County concept is based on similar projects; the Haywood County Arts Council has launched its own version  of the Quilt Trails project and joins other existing quilt trails in Ashe, Avery, Macon, Madison, Mitchell, Watauga, and Yancey counties in North Carolina, making Western North Carolina the geographic area with the highest concentration of quilt trails in the United States.

Quilt patterns will signify a traditional quilt pattern in a family for generations or even something new. Up-to-date information about blocks, including site locations is available on the web site at www.haywoodquilttrails.org. Self-guided trails maps will be developed to direct sightseers along the highways and byways to view these icons of tradition.