The challenging side of QuiltCon

March 21, 2023 No Comments

The last category from QuiltCon-2023 is the Ruby & Bee Fabric Challenge.

These were the 6 fabrics…..

This category was the one that I was most looking forward to because I had a quilt in it!!!

It was such fun to stand with my quilt, knowing that it was hanging with MANY other amazing quilts!!

Let’s look at some of them!!

The 2nd-place ribbon went to this beauty…..

“Encircled: Containing Darkness:” by Julie Limbach Jones

I love so many things about this quilt, but especially the quilting design!!

Those tiny little circles add so much texture to the background.

This next quilt won the 1st-place ribbon…..

My favorite things about this quilt are the touches of colored fabrics that she used on two of the binding sides.

I appreciated the various angle designs in the next quilt…..

….and I love how the quilting lines reinforce the “curves” in the design.

This was the 3rd Place winning quilt…..

The design is very simple but man-o-man does the quilting set it off well. Did you see the solitary blue block that is quilting diagonally?? That is genius!!

This next quilt was completely hand quilted….

I didn’t see much of that at QuiltCon. Maybe a little hand stitching to accent something but not like this!!

There are three more days of R&B Challenges so…..

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“X Marks the Spot”

March 20, 2023 No Comments

Today let’s finish the “Modern X” Exhibit from QuiltCon2023. Remember that these are quilts made to say Happy Birthday to QuiltCon!!

This first quilt was based on the remembrance of an Athletic Trainer who was told “when in doubt, make an X over the injury when taping or bracing it”……

What a fun inspiration!!

The next quilt has a lot of hand quilting…..

….with embroidery thread used to stitch the tiny x’s….

Lots of “X-tra” detail was used in the Courthouse Step Block Quilt……

To truly understand this quilt, you have to get up-close-and-personal…..

And, when one of the “White glove helpers” runs over and asks if you want to see the back of a quilt, you ALWAYS say YES!!!

In this quilt, Jessica Plunkett made a series of Sawtooth star blocks and spent time playing with the position of the stars to create new and secondary designs…..

I love the gradation of color!!

The next quilt…..

Isn’t the quilting wonderful!!

The maker notes that this quilt stretched her abilities with paper piecing and partial seams…..

Finally, I love the “pixelation that appears in the colored squares….

And, the quilting is nothing to sneeze at either!!!

There were a bunch more of these Happy Birthday quilts, but I was completely out of time as they shooed me out of the hall!!

I hope that you enjoyed the Anniversary X quilts.

Tomorrow we start with the Ruby & Bee Fabric challenges. You will be amazed at what people can accomplish with just 6 fabrics!!!

Modern X Exhibit….

March 19, 2023 2 Comments

Now, what is that????

Okay….that sounds interesting!!

Jane made this quilt as a “what-if” game to figure out how to incorporate her small, brightly colored crumbs into a quilt!!

What a great idea!! Turning crumbs into strips is SO much easier than turning them into blocks. That’s ANOTHER idea to add to my list!!

Natalie Skinner used her quilt to push just a little beyond her comfort level…..

I have actually heard that you work better when you are working at a level slightly higher than what you are comfortable with!! Just a fun fact!!

In this quilt, the maker explored bias tape applique…..

This next quilt honors all of our quilting grandmothers’ sense of thrift and beauty by only using scraps of fabric that would normally have been thrown out…..

“Scrap Bin Quilt No. 1” by Laura Shaw Feit

You can do SO much with strip pieced blocks like these and I love the transparency that she achieved here.

You can also add this to my list of “projects that I want to do”.

PLEASE tell me that you all have endless lists of such projects as well!!

I love the innovative quilting on this next quilt…..

The use of the Drunkard’s Path blocks in this design is amazing.

But look closer at the quilting……

The next quilt didn’t stop with just ONE X!!

In the artist’s statement, Augusto says that he wanted to explore the possibilities of the three dimensions in the plane. Based on the number of different levels that I see in the quilt, I think he accomplished that well!!

The next quilt was inspired during a quarrel with her husband…..