Quilt shows are packed with unique, innovative quilts. While every piece deserves recognition, there are limited awards, and some quilts can be easy to miss in a sea of creativity.
To give a few more quilts some love, I like to highlight a few pieces that didn’t win any awards but caught my eye for their strong design, stellar construction, or unique point of view.
5 Quilts that Stood Out to Me at AQS Paducah 2026
At this year’s American Quilter’s Society (AQS) show, the quilts that stood out to me used a wide range of construction techniques, but all showed internal consistency within the design that draws the viewer in from afar, then rewards you for coming closer.
Beyond the Seas
By Isabel Muñoz
What I love about this quilt:
- A wholecloth design uses only two colors of thread to tell the story.
- The white space from the background merges with the sea, which flows into the ship. The artist effectively pulled the dark areas from the design to sculpt the shapes, without feeling the need to add extra lines to define the full shape of the ship.
- The linear direction of the black lines draws your eye through the composition, while the white quilting in the negative space creates the feel of cloudy skies and foaming waves.
Stars in Harmony
By Yoko Nishioka
What I love about this quilt:
- Light, nearly tone-on-tone blocks in the lower right of the quilt create a gradient that moves from a pale, warm yellow to a vibrant blue along the quilt’s edges.
- The star blocks throughout the background interlock with one another and ultimately break into the quilt’s visual border.
- Larger traditionally patterned star blocks both blend into the surrounding stars and set themselves apart in different areas of each block.
Little Girl Danji and Kitten Jenny
By Jinyoung Lee
- The storytelling in this quilt is phenomenal! You meet the young quilter, see her award-winning quilts, and see all of the activities her kitten partakes in while she works.
- The cat poses are specific.
- The quilt’s background uses a traditional log cabin block, pieced in all white, to set the stage for a story about a quilter.
Flowers Woven Through Time
By Masako Seki
What I love about this quilt:
- While most appliqué florals are forced into regimented designs, the all-over floral motifs feel like you are immersed in a delightfully wild garden.
- Mixing prints with solids and incorporating gradating fabrics creates depth within the design.
- Alternative substrates and carefully placed decorative stitches add texture to the design.
Mandalas Gone Wild
By Judy Ballance
I typically avoid quilts made from a pattern for this type of post, but this particular quilt handles the fabric selection and quilting exceptionally well, and I kept coming back to look at it during the show.
What I love about this quilt:
- Fussy cut fabric placement enhances the appliqué motifs.
- Using a light turquoise print for the background fabric is unexpected and gives the quilt an airy feel.
- The dots incorporated into the checkerboard background quilting create an additional textural element that makes the overall design shine.
More Quilts to See
You may have noticed that most of these quilts weren’t particularly “Modern,” but there is a good reason for that- I recently shared the complete Modern category from the show! I hope you enjoy seeing this section of the show in its entirety.
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