BANGOR – Quixotic Quilts, an exhibit at Boyd Place, 21 Boyd St., has generated more buzz in the community than any other exhibit the senior care housing facility has organized, said Administrator Karen Higgins.

“The response [to the idea of the quilt show] has been amazing,” she said. The show, featuring 14 quilters, opened Oct. 26 and will run through December. The facility’s art committee organized the show.

One definition of the word “quixotic” is “visionary,” and exhibitor Sally Field’s quilts embody that description. Her most striking piece in the show, crafted in glowing shades of orange, is “Disintegration” – made, she said, when her aging mother was coming apart mentally and physically. The quilt is not shaped geometrically, but rather looks like a rectangle with one side collapsing and the other sides askew and jagged.

“It came out in chunks,” Field, of Hampden, said. When her mother was doing well, Field worked on the quilt. When her mother wasn’t doing well, work on the quilt halted. It was only after her mother’s death that Field realized how closely the quilt was linked to the ups and downs of her mother’s well-being.

“It’s the only quilt I had made with uneven edges,” she said. “Nothing about it is regular. It’s a total disintegration from my regular style of work.”

Field has exhibited her work nationally. Sometimes she brings home prizes and sometimes she doesn’t, she said. But what she does bring home whenever she travels is fabric.

“I buy material wherever I am,” she said – including China, where she bought blue fabrics that she incorporated into “China Blues.”

Field said she was drawn to quilting because she doesn’t have the ability to paint or draw. A friend suggested that she take a quilting class.

“After that,” she said, “I stopped doing all the other things – I even gave away my knitting needles.”

Field’s “Flowers Beds at Twilight” uses a color palette of 70 different fabrics. Looking carefully, one can see small creatures – a salamander, a snail – coming out of the foliage.

Liane Giambalvo of Hampden has four pieces in the show – days two, three, four and five of her “Seven Days of Creation” series, which she has been working on for more than a year.

“I’m quite a bit slower than God,” she said. Days one, six and seven, Giambalvo explained said, are in various stages of being ripped out, or she is rethinking the designs.

One wall of the exhibit is given to the work of three generations of quilters from Surry – Mary Ellen Gilley, daughter Cynthia Gilley Wixson and Cynthia’s daughter, Judy Gilley.

Judy Gilley’s quilt, “Bouquets to My Mother,” is reminiscent of antique coverlets known as Baltimore quilts, except that each off-white square is machine-embroidered with flower motifs rather than floral applique.

Cynthia Gilley Wixon’s “Ribbon Illusions” is a small piece incorporating narrow organdy ribbon, which gives the surface a gauzy, pink, plaid look.

Mary Ellen Gilley’s “Love and Lunacy” is a folk design of moon, star and sun motifs embellished with buttons. The design is reminiscent of wool felt “penny” rugs popular in the 19th century.

“All the quilters have done their own designs,” Higgins said, “and every quilt has a story that goes with it.”

Susan Pierce of Brewer said her piece, “Aquarium,” began in a workshop conducted by Jennifer Miller of Bernard. The point of the class, she said, was to get quilters to “loosen up” their work. The piece is embellished with three-dimensional elements such as seashells, beach glass and buttons.

“I thought I’d never finish it,” she said. “I kept thinking of something else to put in it.”

Other quilters in the show, whose work is equally as accomplished, are Gerry Williams, Barbara Jones, Dianne Hodgkins, Deborah Rustin Cyr, Mary Boyd, Jennie Miller, Betty Veysey and Barbara Uttomark.

Quixotic Quilts is open 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday through December at Boyd Place. To learn more, call 941-2820.