Yesterday we look at a few of the Ruby & Bee fabric challenges from QuiltCon-2023.

Here are a few more!!

This first quilt is entirely pieced!!!

That is a lot of circles to piece!!!

I particularly liked the background quilting. Again….just a small change of direction in the lines added so much interest…..

I was so intent on keeping my lines straight that I NEVER considered what a change like this would do!!

This next quilt allowed the maker to work thru the flooding in her neighboring state of Kentucky!!

She improvisational pieced the debris as it backed up into people’s yards and lives!!

The next quilt was a larger version of a design that she made into a mini quilt…..

The simplicity of this design truly appeals to me!!

The next quilt is part of a “crosswalk” series…..

I like the textures that are formed by the narrow and wide quilting.

In her Artist’s Statement, she poses the question….”What happens when you try o go to there from where you are?” Just think about that if you can’t sleep at night!!

The next quilt was inspired by a 1979 poster called “Coffee Hour”…..

She used a technique called “Twice-cut Drunkard’s Path” from Jenny Haynes.

I DEFINITELY am going to look that up!!

The last quilt for today is…..

Her inspiration came from Becky Goldsmith’s Bullseye Quilt and Audrey Esarey’s Radial Quilts. I THOUGHT that I recognized Audrey Esarey’s touch.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, check out this post from Saturday…..

Using Negative Space at QuiltCon23

Alright…..two days down, two to go!!

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!!!

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…..

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…..

You really have to get up close and personal with this quilt to truly appreciate how much the quilting adds…..

That’s half of them….more to come tomorrow.

---

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

Thank you…….

When I stepped into this Category area, I was expecting to see lots of quilts with small designs and tons of empty backgrounds with lots of quilting.

I was wrong….. Here is the directive for the category…..

USE OF NEGATIVE SPACE….. Quilt design incorporates creative use of negative space integrated into the composition of the quilt.

OK…..NOT blank space but new designs created by the background.

Take this first quilt for example…..

Amy improvisationally paper-pieced the blocks and then rotated the blocks to create fun “steps” in the negative space.

When I first saw this quilt, I didn’t notice the two different arrangements from the top right corner to the bottom left. It really adds interest to the piece.

Amy also created the next one in a similar colorway…..

I love the designs that show up in the lighter white/beige fabric.

Black and White dominate this 1st-place ribbon-winning quilt…..

The quilt was inspired by a wide range of modern and contemporary art pieces that date from the 1950-1970s.

The chartreuse added to this black and white quilt adds interest…..

This quilt took the 2nd-pace ribbon in the category and was the result of a 30-day improv sew-a-long. Nice result!!

This next quilt fits more with my idea of what a “Negative Space” quilt would look like…..

Claire designed the quilt in Procreate and used English Paper Piecing to complete the top.

As you might imagine, I am quite taken with the quilting…..

The final quilt is my favorite…..

I originally thought that it was the same quilt that I had seen at Houston, but as I looked back, I found that I had actually seen two other of her quilts in a similar style…..

I am obviously a FAN!!!…..Is that weird??

Tomorrow we start looking at the “Modern X” category…. Be sure to come back for more.

If you are a fan of straight-line quilting, you might be interested in this online course teaching 8 (or more) ways to use a Straight-Edged ruler….