NORTHFIELD, Vt. -- The joy of quilting must be implanted in women's DNA. What else can explain the cheerful excitement of the 24th Vermont Quilt Festival? My friend and I encountered very few men at New England's oldest and largest annual quilt show, but lots of high-spirited women. Together they created a happy, upbeat ambience, as well as that peculiar sense of unity that is only possible among those sharing the same passion.

Quilters and quilt fanciers from around the world gathered at the Vermont Quilt Festival.

In our early 30s and having taken up quilting less than a year ago, we were among the youngest and the least experienced. But in our three-day stay at the festival, held in late July at Norwich University in Northfield, we immersed ourselves in the world of quilts just like the experienced quilters. Over 350 magnificent quilts, both antique and new, were on display. Top quality vendors were gathered from around the country and numerous workshops and lectures were conducted by renowned quilt artists.

We stayed in one of the university dorms. The room opposite ours was occupied by two local women who, we found, were old hands at the festival. Their walls and beds were draped with quilts. The sewing machines that they brought from home worked without rest, and they didn't go to the cafeteria, but prepared their meals in their room.

We'd heard so much about the terrible heat of past festivals that we only brought bath towels for blankets, but it was exceptionally cold this year, and we could barely sleep the first night. By morning, we sorely regretted not having opted for a nice B&B with warm beds and a private bath.

"It was freezing last night," we told the two ladies in the opposite room.

"We have two extra quilts in our room; why don't you use them?" Nancy, one of the ladies, promptly said, and pulled out her colorful quilts. One still had a ribbon attached from a recent exhibition: It must have been on display.

"I brought them to show to my instructor," she said. We slept warmly and comfortably the next two nights. What's more, her quilts instantly made our stark, unfriendly dorm room a lively, inviting place. Sleeping under her quilts, I had to ask myself if I could have done the same if I were her -- lending to strangers quilts in which I had invested so much time and devotion. We treated her quilts with extreme care.

Our quilt class, "Red and Green: An Applique Tradition," focused on designing, cutting and invisibly stitching applique elements. Applique is a technique typically used in a type of quilt known as "Baltimore Album." Instructor Jeana Kimball was a kind, amiable woman from Utah. To my surprise, most of the beautifully symmetrical applique designs were created in the same way as my favorite activity in kindergarten: folding, cutting and opening origami.

In one exercise, we each folded a piece of paper (all the same size) into quarters and drafted rose and tulip patterns on them. When everybody gathered and placed the paper cutouts on the floor, no two were the same, and they instantly became a lovely quilt design of tulip and rose applique blocks.

The quilts displayed in the festival were all amazingly detailed. Some were antiques from the famed Shelburne Museum, which is about an hour's drive away. Antique or new, the most depressing discovery for me was the out-of-this-world tiny hand-stitching, which put my own quilts in a whole different category.

Among the most meticulously detailed quilts were those known as "Dear Jane," which contain much smaller (and therefore many more) blocks of patchwork than other sampler quilts. Originally made by a Vermont woman named Jane Stickle (18171896), her 2-meter-square quilt uses an astounding 5,602 pieces of fabric, finished with exceptional skill.

Jane made the quilt during the Civil War in 1863, probably as she anxiously waited for her loved ones to return from the war. If not for Brenda Manges Papadakis, a quilting instructor with a background as a math teacher, Jane's magnificent quilt would have sat unremarked in Vermont's Bennington Museum. Brenda encountered Jane's quilt first in a book by Donna Bister and Richard Cleveland (the latter, incidentally, chairman of the Vermont Quilt Festival), and was "immediately hypnotized by the geometric designs in Jane's blocks and triangles," as she wrote in her book "Dear Jane."

Marveling at its "nontraditional, creative, innovative, even avant-garde" designs, she drew the patterns one by one, all 252 of them, and introduced them to the world in her book. At the festival, there was a section which displayed quilts inspired by her book; some of these came from France and the Netherlands.

One of the attractions of this festival was Brenda herself, offering Dear Jane classes. My friend and I were not able to take her class, because it was already full when we applied -- months before the festival! We did get to attend her lecture, though. Brenda was a radiant, energetic person. Her lively talk described how she was able to draft those wonderful patterns with help of other people, including festival chairman Cleveland.

Brenda also talked about her Dear Jane Web site, created for her by her son, and how it became a vital means of networking among Dear Jane quilt fans around the world. Those who have visited and registered at her Web site communicate with each other via e-mails no matter how far apart they live. After her speech, Brenda asked the audience to bring their own Dear Jane quilts up on stage. One by one, audience members went up, introduced themselves and proudly showed off their quilts, completed or in progress.

Brenda herself was one of those who failed to finish her current Dear Jane project in time for the festival, and had hung the long, unfinished pieces from her shoulders like scarfs during the speech.

She seemed to be meeting some of the quilters for the first time on stage that day (though they may have known each other in cyberspace), and gave each one an enthusiastic hug.

Most of the women were middle-aged or older, and some came from as far away as Holland. They all looked happy, youthful and as if they were truly enjoying their lives. Finding something that one can wholeheartedly enjoy is a great thing, I thought. Quilting was their joy, and I was grateful that I could share the moment with them.