The QuiltCon Jury Results are In! See How My 5 Entries Fared

The QuiltCon jury results are in! I had five entries this year, and based on my experiences in previous years, I had some preconceived ideas about which quilts were likely to be accepted and which quilt would likely receive a rejection letter.

Why would I enter a quilt I don’t expect to get accepted?

All quilt show acceptances are somewhat unpredictable, and QuiltCon may be the most surprising of all. I love every quilt I entered, but the style of some seemed to have a higher likelihood of working with the show’s overall aesthetic.

There are thousands of unique quilts entered each year and the jury has the virtually impossible job of selecting quilts that will create the best overall show for a given year. This year the jurors accepted just 481 quilts from 2,089 submissions. Quilts that may not work in a show last year or next year may be perfect for this year’s show. QuiltCon always feels like a carefully curated art exhibit.

The Low-Chance-of-Acceptance Quilts

Keeping it 100

Category entered: Piecing

You can read more about the design and construction of this quilt here.

Description:

Stripes were the theme of my first 100-day project for 2022. Between January 1st and April 10th, I explored the use of stripes in my quilting practice. Piecing techniques included inserting ⅛ ” wide strips, interleaving, and Y-seams, as well as traditional piecing methods. As the quilt grew from the inside outward, I focused on how I could use the contrast (or lack of contrast) in the striped components to draw the viewer’s eye around the composition. 

This quilt was edge to edge quilted with the design U-Turn by Bethanne Nemesh.

Jury Results: Rejected for this year. I consider this quilt maximalism, which is a hit-and-miss aesthetic for QuiltCon.

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Angled

Category Entered: Small Quilts

You can read more about the design and construction of this quilt here.

Description:

Inspired by the traditional quilting motifs of squares and triangles, this mini turns them on end through the use of scale and alternative grid work. Traditional and foundation paper piecing techniques are used to create a design with piecing as narrow as ⅛ inch.

Jury Results: Accepted!!! I am stunned and thrilled! I always feel like the small quilts category is pretty competitive (although maybe this is just my perception), and this quilt has a modern-traditional vibe that can be tricky – how modern is too modern? How traditional is too traditional?

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The Moderate-Chance-of-Acceptance Quilts

Water, Land, and Sky

Category Entered: Minimalism. Selecting categories is challenging, and this quilt was more difficult than most. I ended up going with minimalism because it simplifies the depiction of a landscape.

You can read about the design and construction of this quilt here.

Description:

The life of this quilt started as a single piece of fabric divided into segments and individually hand-dyed using a low water immersion technique. These pieces were cut at random angles and assembled as two separate panels which were each slashed into strips of equal width. The resulting strips were alternated and reassembled as a new, unified arrangement. 

The dominant use of horizontal lines evokes the feeling of an abstract landscape and allows the viewer to experience the convergence of water, land, and sky in a way that is implied but not defined in the composition.

Jury Results: Rejected for this Year. Hand-dyed fabrics that embrace highly textural effects are not commonly represented at QuiltCon in past shows. It also may have been better suited to a category other than minimalism.

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Where We Connect

Category Entered: Appliqué

You can read about the design and construction of this quilt here.

Description:

Where do we connect? The top for this piece started as dark blue fabric basted over the same amount of medium blue fabric with arc-shaped lines that intersect at a single point. Each line is created by cutting a slit in the dark blue fabric and sewing down either edge with needle turn appliqué. Through this process, the personality of the quilt is revealed line by line. Once quilted the piece continues to evolve with the removal of a circular section of the quilt. The revolution of the inner circle breaks previous connections and forms new intersections with its current positioning. Throughout the entire construction process none of the original fabric is removed, only altered, just as we change through our connections and experiences but continue to carry past versions of ourselves forward as we change throughout our lives.

Jury Results: Accepted!!! This quilt involved some risk-taking, and this time it paid off!

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The Most-Likely-to-be-Accepted Quilt

Spinning Out

Category Entered: Log Cabin Challenge

You can read about the design and construction of this quilt here.

Description:

Inspired by a traditional log cabin quilt block, Spinning Out starts with a central motif with acute triangles replacing the traditional rectangular logs. The value of these triangles moves from black, through seven shades of grey, to white, and then back toward black creating the illusion of an open square spinning through space. The original design was drawn in a square format which I then cropped to capture an asymmetrical moment of movement.

Jury Results: Rejected for this year. I suspect this was a highly competitive category- there are infinite ways to interpret a log cabin. This design may not have struck the jury as close enough to a log cabin, or, with its roots in a common quilting motif, perhaps there were other similar log cabin interpretations.

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The Jury Results and What’s Next

There you have it- Two acceptances, three rejections.

Angled and Where we Connect will get hanging sleeves and show labels added to the back in the next few days. Then they get shipped to the show! Quilts arrive by early January and are judged before the show.

I will most likely enter the rejected quilts in other shows in the coming year, so there is plenty to look forward to. They are already just a few of the phenomenal quilts you can see at #quiltconreject on Instagram- It’s the best quilt show on the internet!