Quilt Con – Let’s get minimalist!!

As I wandered into this category, I wondered exactly what constituted a Minimalist Quilt. The answer was waiting for me……

EXTREME SIMPLIFICATION….how is that done??

The first quilt that I saw was this one……

“Learning Curve” by Betsy Vinegrad

…and I LOVED the simplification!!!

There were two “white on white” quilts that were each interesting in their own way. The first one…..

“Milky Opals” by Lorena Uriarte

….has great quilting to accent the circles, but when you get closer to the circles…..

…you can see that the textures are from various types of fabric. It was ingenious!!!

The next “white” quilt……

“+ X” by Jera MacKenzie

….looked like it was an incredible example of precision piecing.

BUT NO….instead it is a white fabric over a black batting so the white parts are where the seam allowances keep the batting from showing thru. Have a closer look…..

The feeling of transparency is even further emphasized in this quilt!!

“Watercolor Study No. 12” by Audrey Esarey

I enjoy the green lines formed by improvisational piecing….

“Leaves of Grass” by Heather Pregger

It is so stunning with the black background fabric!!

There were others that I enjoyed, but this last one was my FAVORITE…..

Now you are probably looking at this and seeing a blue circle set on four different shades of purple fabric…..

PSYCH!!!!!

The purple background fabric is all ONE fabric and the color changes are made with the quilting threads. Look closely at this zoom-in photo…..

When it is up this close, you can’t see the color change but when you step away…..it is ASTOUNDING!!!

I definitely consider this to be Minimalisn at its best!!!

Keeping coming back for more excitement from QuiltCon!!

If you are excited by all of these straight-line quilting designs, you might be interested in this…..

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If you have an interest in ruler quilting, check out this online course…..

Click HERE for more information

QuiltCon23 -Small Quilts

Under the Quilt Con rules, a “Small Quilt” is judged ONLY by its size. It doesn’t matter what technique is used. As long as the perimeter of the quilt is less than 119 inches, it can go into the category.

Here are a few of my favorites…..

This first one was made of 1/4-inch hexagons…..YES….1/4-inch……Yikes…..

“Highs and Lows: Year 1” by Sheri-Cifaldi-Morrill

She started this on March 18, 2020….the first day of the COVID crisis!! Each set of rows represents one month….the top row represents the low temperature and the bottom is the high for the day.

“The Little Bitty Block Party” by Nikki Woolsey

The blocks are 3-inch modified log cabin blocks. It was very effective!!!

Now, if you really don’t like burying thread tails, you might try this……

“Back In Therapy” by Laura Hartrich

The thread tails are covered with Tulle and then quilted into the design…..

Such fun!!!

I truly loved the quilting on this next quilt…..

“Which Way Did they Go? 21” by Patti Kupferer

In her artist statement, she said that the quilting was inspired by several stained glass windows that had various sections in them. She chose to fill these sections with quilting rather than glass!!!

This is some amazing quilting.

And, look at the cut-outs at the base of each of the geese columns/rows.

This blue and green strip pieced quilt zooms in on the narrowing neck of a wicker basket……

“Wicker & Woven I” by Cristina DeMiranda

I love the idea of taking an object, focusing on a certain aspect of it, and using that to design a quilt.

Oh great…something else to add to the list of quilts that I want to make!!!

This quilt was interesting too…..

“Sunset Wavescape” by Kyona Nason

I love the way that the waves are formed without there being a single curvy line!!! She achieved this by creating two panels of wedge shapes arranged into color gradients and then interleaved them together to make this great wave!!!

This was the 2nd place winner…..

“Exploring the Cosmos: Space Junk” by Nancy Powell

It had improvisational piecing, perfect matchstick quilting, and bits of hand stitching thrown in for good measure.

The first-place quilt was this one……

“Color Riot” by Stephanie Ruyle

Once again, it featured improvisational piecing, impeccable matchstick quilting, and bits of handwork.

One of the things that I love about matchstick quilting is the ridges that form when you leave a bit larger space between SOME of the quilting rows.

Come back tomorrow and we will look at more from QuiltCon!!!

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If you have an interest in ruler quilting, check out this online course…..

Click HERE for more information

Handwork at QuiltCon

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I am NOT known for my handwork!!! So, when I walked into the handwork area, I wasn’t expecting much!!

But, as usual, I was surprised!!

First of all, I had to change my definition of what a “handwork” quilt was!! You see, I think of something completely pieced and quilted by hand. But, the QuiltCon definition was this….

The first quilt that caught my eye was this one…..

“Confetti” by Diana Fox

It took me a while to figure out what the handwork was, but I finally got close enough to see the seed stitches…..

….that made up the shadows.

The really interesting thing about this was the fact that it was quilted in 1/8-inch lines BEFORE the seed stitches were added. But, the stitches didn’t show thru to the back!!

That meant that she had to run the stitches thru the batting rather than “stab-stitching” them thru the entire quilt sandwich. That would have been SO hard to do!!! Well done Diana!!

Next was this piece……

“The Sun Goes Down Alone” by Jennifer Broemel

This is a great exercise in how threads can change fabrics. Have a closer look…..

That is a LOT of cross-stitches!!

It was interesting to take a peek at the back of the quilt…..

…..where you can see that tulle was also used. this gives a great view of ALL of the machine stitching that went into the quilt!!

This next one was simple, but SO effective……

In 2021, I attempted something like this but fused the fabrics and wasn’t happy with the fraying that occurred along the edges. You can read more about the attempt HERE.

It looks as if these are pieced together which would solve that problem and I REALLY like the idea of adding movement with the stitching. Maybe THIS will be my new “slow stitching” project???

Finally, I was drawn to this quilt…..

“Crowned With Care” by Uzoma Samuel Anyanwu

lt reminded me greatly of a photo that I took when we were in Mozambique……

If you want to read more about our lunchtime with Zak’s family, check out this post…..

Portrait of a Mozambique bush family

But I have digressed……

Back to the quilt….. I loved the machine work on this quilt but couldn’t figure out why it was in the handwork category. Then I noticed the headscarf on this one woman…..

It is a magnificent beaded piece and DEFINITELY belongs in the handwork arena!!

Once again, these quilts were great examples of a new way to think about handwork.

Maybe I can try some soon!!!

If you enjoy this blog, please share it with your friends!!!

Thank you…….

Quilt Con- 2023!!!

This past week, I had the pleasure of spending two days at …..

When you entered the room, the excitement and anticipation was palpable!!!

The first quilts that you saw were the BIG award winners, so here they are!!!

The Best of Show was….

“Bullseye” by Barbara Strick

She started with the traditional Drunkards Path pattern and played with color to make the circles “shimmer, shake and roll”!!!

The MQG Award of Excellence went to…..

She said that the quilt was based on a traditional “Courthouse Steps” pattern but added the improvisational sawtooth design in each of the “steps”!

Best Machine Quilting (frameless) was this piece…..

“Commotion” by Claire Victor

They hung these award quilts so that both sides could be seen and that was a definite plus with this one. Just look at this gorgeous quilting…..

Best Machine Quilting on a frame machine (long-arm) was…..

“Almond Country Beauty” by Rana Heredia and quilted by Tiffany Barcus

Have a look at the quilting…..

Fitting with the “Modern” aesthetic, much of the quilting on display were simple straight lines so it was fun to see something with a little more pizzaz!!!

As you can imagine, I took LOTS of photos and will be working thru my favorite categories in the next week.

I hope you will join me on the journey!!!

Until tomorrow……

MQG Conference

Back in October, I signed up for Modern Quilt Guild “Sessions”…..a 4-day online conference and it has been such a great investment!!

The first session that caught my eye was using ProCreate in quilting (by Karen Lewis). I have talked previously about using Procreate to plan quilting designs but I had never seen it used for actual quilt design!!

She showed me how to design a block…..

Duplicate it….

….and quickly have a quilt designed…..

Great…..now I have ANOTHER way of designing quilts to add to my To-Do List!!

Kim Soper (@lelandavestudios) had a wonderful workshop about Stash Management. One of my favorite things from her talk was about how to know when you have too much fabric…..is that even a thing???

And then there was this slide…..

Sue Bouchard talked about using Directional fabrics,

and Diana Fitzgerald had a very interesting program about”The Perception of Visual Randomness”. She worked thru an example where the right-hand piece is completely random (fabrics pulled out of a bag) and the left one is a “False Random” where she used a series of rules as she placed the fabrics…..

I don’t know about you, but I like the “False Random” better!!

Cindy Grisdela (@cindygrisdelaquilts) gave a wonderful lecture about color and my favorite (go figure) was “How do I quilt it?” from Christa Watson (@christaquilts).

In particular, she spent a lot of time talking about making patterns easier. Look at this alternative to matchstick quilting…..

Interestingly, much of her quilting can be done with a walking foot!!!

I am excited to be taking a “How to design a quilting plan” workshop from her at the Houston Show….actually when this post comes out, I will have ALREADY taken the workshop.

You can expect to hear more from her!!

If you haven’t checked out the Modern Quilt Guild, I would HIGHLY encourage you to do so!! It is an online guild and they have SO many resources available. I don’t consider myself a “modern” quilter, but I have learned so much from their weekly newsletters, online tutorials and conferences.

At $35 a year, it seems like a deal to me!!