The exhibition is being held at the Grand Hotel, spanning the entire facility. The doors open to the public on Thursday at 9 a.m., and the event will end on Saturday at 8 p.m.

Several classes and seminars will be held as the day goes on, as well. Registration online is preferred, but participants may sign up on arrival.

Glueckert, the 2024 featured quilter, will be teaching five classes at the Minot Prairie Quilt Festival. The classes she will be teaching are Machine Quilting with a Walking Foot, Free Motion Quilting on Your Domestic Machine and 3D Flowers.

Glueckert grew up with her own sewing machine and learned how to sew from her mother. In high school, she was preparing to head off to college and she wanted a quilt to take with her. She found a pattern, began the project and fell in love with the process of quilting.

For about the first 20 years, Glueckert used patterns to create a quilt, meaning that she was following a guide to putting the quilt together.

Now she is able to look at something, sketch it out and write up her own patterns for any design she so chooses.

One unique quality to the fabrics that Glueckert uses is every single piece is hand-dyed. She purchases different colors of inks and prepared-for-dying fabric (PFD) so she can mix the colors together until she finds the exact shade she is looking for. The material comes to her without the protective coating over it, so it does not need to be washed prior to dying. It can be cut straight from the roll and go into the dye bucket.

The ink mixtures that are leftover in the bucket are then poured over another piece of fabric in a clean empty bucket to create a one-of-a-kind back piece for each quilt. On the color spectrum, when all of the colors are mixed together, they create a brown color. If too many colors of ink are wet and mix together, it is more likely that they will create that brown. Despite that, the composition of the pieces are all brought together at the end.

On a smaller quilt she made of a bubble-eyed goldfish, she “broke the rules” of quilting by gluing small fake gems on the fish’s head to make it more one-of-a-kind. She also wanted something that was more “frilly,” so she used a net-like material to make the fins on the fish.

“So, I like to not follow the rules,” Glueckert said. “You go by the rules to learn the method, and then you curve from the rules to come up with something new and unique.”

The piece called “King of the Jews” was made in honor of Good Friday on March 29. On the left side, Jesus is looking to the right with his crown of thorns on his head. Near the bottom right corner, Glueckert used her sewing machine to stitch “King of the Jews” onto the front piece of fabric.

To make the lines in the hair and the letters, Glueckert used the free motion quilting method. Instead of following a pattern or putting the stitches in a straight line, she moved the fabric around wherever she wanted to get the desired design.

In one of the corners on the back of each quilt she makes, she gives the quilt a name and signs a piece of fabric that gets sewn on.

A bulk of the quilts she makes are given away as gifts to family members or friends.

One thing that is a little off-putting for Glueckert is she will never know if the design will be favorable until everything is done and sewn together.

“You never know if it’s gonna be worth the time when you’re starting,” Glueckert said. “But the more you do it, the better you get at figuring out how to get the result that you want.”

Some of the quilts that she makes can take months to design and stitch together.

Hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of hours of work will be on display at the Minot Prairie Quilt Festival, including work from Glueckert.