QuiltCon Jury Results

Posted on December 11, 2019 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in 100 Day Project, Quilt Shows, Quilting, Quilting Community / Leave a comment

I’m always impressed with the quick turnaround that QuiltCon manages with their jury process, and this year’s results are in even faster than usual! Modern Quilt Guild members create amazing work, and I can only imagine how difficult it must be for the jury to select which quilts will be included in QuiltCon each year. I have never had all of my submissions accepted, and this year was no exception. I am ecstatic that four of my five quilts will be included in the 2020 show! (Check out this post to see detail shots and the descriptions I submitted for each quilt.)

Zenith is the first quilt that I have had accepted in the Improv category! At one point I read that this category tends to receive the most submissions. I don’t know if this was true this year, but I was nervous submitting one of my all time favorite quilts into a category that give the jurors so many amazing choices.

Resonance was my 2018 100 Day Project, and the only quilt I have ever re-submitted to QuiltCon. I have a tendency to move on after a quilt is rejected. I will often enter them in other shows, but I don’t usually go back to the same shows. This time I just had to give it one more chance, and I am so happy that I did!

Forward and Back was started as part of a guild challenge that also included the 2019 Pantone Color of the Year. I was happy with the resulting mini quilt, and I am thrilled to have it included in the show.

Stripe Club was my last minute finish, so I was very happy that the last minute push to add more hand quilting was worth it! I entered it in the evening of the final day, so I really cut it close.

34x34x34 was my only rejection this year, which is really lucky. I love this quilt, and it will maintain its role in my trunk show, but it has received a few rejections now, so I think its show entry days are probably over.

The quilt I entered on the last day has a number of 1489, so I am assuming that there are approximately 1500 entries for only a few hundred spots. I hope you will all consider entering your quilts in other shows as well as next year’s QuiltCon. It is wonderful to walk into a quilt show and see the modern aesthetic well represented.

When I was first entering shows, I had one quilt rejected from a show after I had already submitted it to the next show hosted by the same organization. Not only did it get into the second show, it got into several more hosted by multiple organizations. That quilt went on to receive a second place and a third place at shows with the original sponsoring organization. Just because a quilt doesn’t get in the first time, doesn’t mean it won’t be loved by another show or in another year. Please don’t give up on your amazing creations!

Congratulations to everyone who had a quilt accepted to QuiltCon 2020! Please send lots of pictures- my quilts are going, but I can’t make it this year!

I am excited to be participating in this year’s 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge hosted by Cheryl Sleboda of Muppin.com, and I hope you will have the chance to check out some of the other awesome blogs that are participating this month.

The Value of Coral: A Work in Progress

Posted on June 14, 2019 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Aurifil, Color, Works In Progress (WIP) / 1 Comment

Coral is just about the perfect color as far as I’m concerned. It sits so nicely between pink and orange which is one of my favorite color combinations. So when Pantone announced the color of the year for 2019, I was ecstatic! So far this is my second project to incorporate Living Coral, and I have another in the works that has lots of coral pieces included in a wider color scheme.

I think a lot about value when I design a quilt, and success of this particular design depends on it. A monotone interpretation of the color Coral helps create the illusion of dimension. Living Coral has a value that sits near the middle of the value scale, so I selected two lighter fabrics and one darker fabric for the design. Since coral doesn’t easily go to a really dark value without drastically muting the color, I selected a dark violet for the receding squares. The dark, cool color ended up setting off the coral nicely.

I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring a mostly monotone quilt with more traditional piecing techniques, and I can’t wait to finish it up!

Quilt (top) Stats

Title: The Value of Coral

Size: 42″ x 56″

Techniques: Machine Piecing

Fabric: Solids

Thread: Pieced with 50wt Aurifil

This quilt top is my entry in the 2019 Pantone Quilt Challenge hosted by No Hats in the House and Bryan House Quilts. I hope you will check out all of the exciting entries!

I am a resident of the United States

Forward and Back

Posted on June 7, 2019 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilt Shows, Quilting Community / 3 Comments

This Spring one of the quilt groups I’m in issued a challenge to try out a technique called interleaving, and this mini quilt is the result. The idea behind interleaving is to take two relatively simple quilt blocks, cut them into strips, and alternate the strips to create a single block.

Starting out, I had to keep reminding myself to keep things simple. I have a tendency to add extra piecing to create interest, but this was not the place to add too many seams! I wanted the color palette to evoke a feeling of a sunset over the ocean, so I decided to make one block with warm colors and the other with cool colors. The first block is a machine pieced circle with the Pantone color of the year, Living Coral, as the center. (I love this year’s color so much that it is appearing in a few more projects, too!)

The second block is three wedge shaped segments in cool colors. Most of this quilt is made of quilting cotton, but I decided to incorporate a piece of Art Gallery denim into this block to add a slightly different texture.

Maintaining the overall circle shape was important to what I wanted to achieve in this design, so I knew I had to cut the blocks into 1″ strips. This width of strip means the finished area is equal to the seam allowance- 1/2″ exposed and 1/2″ of seam allowance. When the strips of the two blocks are alternated, the circle shape is maintained.

The piecing is really the star in this design, so I decided to do simple stitch in the ditch quilting using Aurifil monofilament.

The faced edges of the quilt allow the linear design to visually continue to the edge of the quilt.

Quilt Stats

Title: Forward and Back

Size: 19″ x 19″

Techniques: Machine Piecing, Interleaving

Quilting: Stitched in the ditch with a walking foot quilting on a Bernina 1008

Fabric: Cotton solids and lightweight quilters denim

Batting: Hobbs Tuscany Wool

Thread: Quilted with Aurifil monofilament

Binding: Faced with the solid to match the backing

This mini quilt is my entry in the 2019 Pantone Quilt Challenge hosted by No Hats in the House and Bryan House Quilts. I hope you will check out all of the exciting entries!

I am a resident of the United States

2018 Year in Review

Posted on January 11, 2019January 11, 2019 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilt Shows, Quilting, Quilting Community / 2 Comments

Around the beginning of every year, I like to look back on the previous year. I have usually accomplished more than it feels like I have, and 2018 was no exception.

I started the year with a 100 Day project which culminated in Resonance. Aurifil liked it so much they displayed it in their booth at Spring Quilt Market. Later in the year, I became an Aurifil Artisan!

Photo courtesy of Sylvia of Flying Parrot Quilts

In January, Lissa of LovinglyLissa.com and I finished the QuiltCon Charity Quilt for the Central Ohio MQG quilt that we designed together.

QuiltCon 2018 also included four of my quilts in the contest. Lateral Ascension (upper left of the photo below) even received third place in the Minimalism category! (It also received an honorable mention at AQS Spring Paducah and a 2nd Place at AQS Grand Rapids!)

My first cover quilt also came around last year. Raise the Roof is a particular favorite of mine, and it also received a third place at the American Quilter’s Society Fall Paducah Show.
Upward Perspective was a mini made for a Curated Quilts Challenge, and it was selected for inclusion in the magazine!

In 2018 I also started my second Block of the Month with Dabble and Stitch in Columbus, Ohio. This year’s quilt has pictorial representations of key Columbus landmarks.

I also designed the 2018 Row by Row for Dabble and Stitch. The theme was music, and I based the block on the state song, Beautiful Ohio.

My most exciting moment of 2018 was having my quilt, Infused Plaid, added to the permanent collection of The National Quilt Museum.

Photo courtesy of The National Quilt Museum

The 2018 colors of the year were Ultra-Violet (Pantone) and Tiger Lily (Kona), and I had a great time putting them together into this quilt! Zenith received a second place in the Modern category at the American Quilter’s Society Fall Paducah Show.

As 2018 drew to a close, I had exciting news that three of my quilts, including Complementary Convergence (below), were selected for QuiltCon 2019! I have added sleeves and labels to them this week, and will be shipping them off at the beginning of next week- now that is a great way to start 2019!

Zenith

Posted on May 11, 2018May 11, 2018 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Art, Finished Quilts, Quilting / 10 Comments

Each year the Central Ohio Modern Quilt Guild issues a color challenge. For the past two years the challenge has been the same: Combine the Pantone and Kona colors of the year into a single sewn object. My project for last year’s challenge was an improv quilt inspired by the Franklin Park Conservatory. The quilt I made for this year’s color challenge is also improv, but it is more structured this time around.

In 2018 the Pantone color of the year is Ultraviolet and the Kona color is Tiger Lily. Among our group this combination had both lovers and haters.

I could definitely see the potential, and wanted to embrace the violets while pushing the piece toward warmer tones. The beginning of my fabric pull looked like this.

Around the time this challenge was issued, the Columbus Museum of Art was hosting a special exhibit which included this oil painting, The Bay of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, by Georges Lacombe which was painted around 1902-1904. The color range in this painting was exactly what I had imagined when I saw the challenge colors.

The quilt top was constructed using structured improv- I measured and used rulers, but the placement of each piece of fabric was determined on the fly. About 2/3 of the quilt went together quickly, but the lower left corner was problematic.

After over a month of struggling with it, I finally came to terms with the fact that I just didn’t have the right pink fabrics to complete the top. (How could I possibly be lacking pink of all colors!) Once I added more pink solids to the palette, the top was easy to finish.

Since the quilting is done on a 120 degree angle, and the piece isn’t particularly large, I decided it would be easier to do the quilting with a walking foot on my domestic machine. It is almost matchstick quilted. The machine stitching is randomly spaced from 1/8″ to 1/2.” Once the machine quilting was finished, I added large stitch hand quilting in the larger gaps between the machine stitching. It was important to me that the quilting stitches add personality to the quilt, so I used a range of thread colors and weights. By the time the quilting was finished I had incorporated 50wt, 40wt, 28wt, and 12wt thread into the quilt.

The majority of the fabrics used in the quilt are solids, but there are a few prints worked into the design. One of those prints, a Tula Pink stripe, was perfect for a bias binding. I combined this print with some yellow solids to finish off the quilt.

Quilt Stats

Title: Zenith

Size: 53″ x 69″

Techniques: Machine Piecing, Structured Improvisational Piecing

Quilting: Almost-Matchstick machine quilting on a Bernina 1008 domestic, large stitch hand quilting

Fabric: Assorted quilt shop quality, 100% cotton solid and print fabrics, and backing of wide-back Tula Pink Print

Batting: Hobbs Tuscany Wool

Thread: Quilted with 50wt, 40wt, 28wt, and 12wt cotton Aurifil

Binding: Tula Pink stripes and yellow solids, cut on the bias at 2″ wide, machine stitched to the front, hand finished

This quilt is entered in the Pantone Color of the Year Challenge at Bryan House Quilts and No Hats in the House. Click the links to check out all of the fabulous entries! My country of residence in the United States.