Carter County Arts and Crafts Festival celebrates 50 years

Carter County Arts and Crafts Festival celebrates 50 years
A booth selling homemade preserves and canned items.
In 1985, the arena was opened up for booths. Today booths in the arena are the first to sell out because they offer larger spaces.
A booth selling hooded towels with popular characters.
Bright, colorful and eclectic crafted items.
A booth with a wide range of baked goods, preserves and handmade items.
Booths such as this selling Christmas decorations are especially popular.

The Carter County Arts and Crafts Competition and Food Truthful will be returning to Hardy Murphy Coliseum future weekend. This year’s celebration will be in particular festive as it will be celebrating its 50th calendar year, and particular displays and decor will be set up to mark the occasion. 

Competition Publicity Chair Kaye Seeliger reported she and Pageant Chair Barbara Swindell have been a part of the function from the incredibly starting.

“Again when the festival started out in 1972, things like craft festivals just were being not happening. It was a completely new notion,” Seeliger reported. “Men and women had just began receiving into crocheting, woodworking and producing crafts again then, so they ended up with all of this stuff but no put to sell it. The Carter County Extension Homemakers had a home economist named Clara at the time, and she was the one particular who came up with the plan of keeping a pageant. Who would have believed that we’d continue to be keeping it soon after all these decades?”