They aren't your grandmother's hand made blankets. No, these quilts are works of art.
"Well, it's been shown at a couple places but it's not been on a bed yet," Betty Peabody of the Foothills Quilters Guild said.
That's true of most of these quilts on display at the Smoky Mountains Visitors Center in Townsend. The quilts are traditional art and a part of Appalachian culture.
"I sat under the quilt frame at my grandmother's knees. And they would throw me down scraps of fabric to sew together and I would take my little needle and thread and sew them together and I would hand them back and they would look at it and they would cut it up and hand me another piece. That's not good enough," Jean Smith said.
Her quilts now are good enough that she teaches quilting and is President of the Foothills Quilters Guild in Maryville, the group that loaned the quilts for display at the Visitors Center.
She made one for her husband who is a Navy veteran.
"In the center there's a quilted Navy emblem," she explained.
That style quilt is a sampler. Each square features a different pattern.
Betty Peabody created a scrappy quilt made of fabric scraps.
"I've collected for years and people have given me their scraps and I cut those up so I've got a lot of stash of scrappy pieces," she said.
Foothills Quilters Guild member Celeste Meunier made an appliqué quilt over about six weeks.
"We had to put our vision of what we saw in the Appalachian Trail. And this is what I thought I would see. Campers, waterfalls, tents, bears, deer," she said as she pointed out parts of her quilt.
She was a longtime sewer who started quilting in 2007.
"I have so much fabric now it's unbelievable because you get addicted to the colors, the textures of the fabric so you have to collect it all," she said.
The Foothills Quilters Guild meets on the first and third Thursdays of the month at the First Church of The Nazarene in Maryville. They swap ideas and usually have a speaker. Most of the actual quilting happens at home though they sometimes quilt together.
Walk-ins are welcome.
"We have experienced, we have some who are just learning and we have in between so it's a good thing to go to and learn from," Betty Peabody said.
While some of the guild members do sell their creations Celeste Meunier does not.
"I wish I had time to sell but I have eight grand children and every time I make something they want something. One Christmas I had to make eight quilts for Christmas," she said.
They make quilts like generations before them did, they preserve a part of Appalachian history, and they are willing to share what they know.
You can see the quilts for free at the Visitors Center through March 16th.