QuiltCon Quilt Show Winners

QuiltCon is in full swing and the winners were announced at yesterday’s awards ceremony!  Congratulations to all of the winners!

Appliqué– Small Quilts
Sponsored by Quilting Treasures

Honorable Mention:
Needless
Laura Bisagna

1st Place:
Self Study, 1
Kimber M. Chawne

Appliqué – Large Quilts
Sponsored by Stash Books

3rd Place:
Retro Modern Shapes
Heather Davidson

2nd Place:
Rainbow Blocks
Kathleen K. Baden

1st Place:
Flying Saucer
Lisa A. Alexakis

Handwork – Small Quilts
Sponsored by Kollabora

Honorable Mention:
Bohemian Confetti
Felicity Ronaghan

1st Place:
Modern Mini
Carolyn D. Braun

Handwork – Large Quilts
Sponsored by eQuilter

3rd Place:
Dark Star
Maura G. Ambrose

2nd Place:
untitled
Lindsay Stead

1st Place:
Log Cabin Improv
Sherri Lynn Wood

Improvisation – Small Quilts
Sponsored by Newcastle Fabrics

Honorable Mention:
Sea Glass on Sand
Felicity Ronaghan

1st Place:
Red Concentrate
Lavialle Campbell

Improvisation – Large Quilts
Sponsored by Robert Kaufman Fabrics

3rd Place:
Love Will Tear Us Apart
Denise Gonzalez-Walker

2nd Place:
Unraveled
Kati Spencer

1st Place:
Pantone Circles
Elizabeth Brandt

Minimalist Design – Small Quilts
Sponsored by Gammill

Honorable Mention:
Helix
Nicole G. Neblett

1st Place:
Pa Kua
Donna Morales-Oemig

Minimalist Design – Large Quilts
Sponsored by Fat Quarter Shop

3rd place:
Don’t Box Me In
Tammy L. Vasser

2nd Place:
2+2
Colleen Wootton

1st Place:
Untitled
Lindsay Stead

Use of Negative Space – Small Quilts
Sponsored by World of Quilts Travel

Honorable Mention:
Shattered
Leanne Chahley

1st Place:
Mobile
Elizabeth Brandt

Use of Negative Space– Large Quilts
Sponsored by Michael Miller Fabrics

3rd Place:
Rhythm & Blues
Anne Deister

2nd Place:
Broken Diamonds
Kati Spencer

1st Place:
Trajectory #2
Megan E. Dye

Piecing – Small Quilts
Sponsored by Aurafil

Honorable Mention:
Frost Bank
Claire T. Jain

1st Place:
Flock of Starlings
Terri Carpenter

Piecing – Large Quilts
Sponsored by Janome

3rd Place:
Don’t Blink
Caro Sheridan

2nd Place:
Autumn Jewels
Krista Fleckenstein

1st Place:
RonQuilt: The Ron Swanson Quilt
Monica Solorio-Snow

Modern Traditionalism– Small Quilts
Sponsored by Clothworks

Honorable Mention:
Fresh Plus
Kathy York

1st Place:
Lifesavers
Lee Heinrich

Modern Traditionalism – Large Quilts
Sponsored by Timeless Treasures

3rd Place:
Hannah
Katie Sciarrino

2nd Place:
Doppleganger
Thomas Knauer

1st Place:
New Star Rising
Ben Darby

Group and Bee Quilts
Sponsored by Ty Pennington Impressions

3rd Place:
Confetti Amongst Friends
Kristy L. Daum

2nd Place:
Kelsey’s Crosses
Mary Workman

1st Place:
Off the B.O.W.
Krista Fleckenstein

Fabric Challenge – Maasi Mara Collection
Sponsored by Dear Stella

3rd Place:
Fabric Challenge – Maasi Mara Collection
A Modern Day Mystery
Lisa Holk

2nd Place:
Not Quite a Shadow
Susan Shore

1st Place:
Dear Stella as Charm Squares Baby Quilt
Melody Baker

Modern in Miniature Quilting Challenge
Sponsored by Modern Quilts Unlimited

3rd Place:
Shirts
Carolyn Friedlander

2nd Place:
Analysis of Variance
Charlotte Newland

1st Place:
Modern Challenge
Catherine A. Redford

Coats & Clark Quilting Excellence
Sponsored by Coats & Clark

Sing It Out Loud
Karen L. Anderson-Abraham

Best Machine Quilting
Sponsored by Stitch Magazine and Quilting Arts Magazine

The Local Quilt
Carolyn Friedlander

Best in Show
Sponsored by American Quilters Society

Double Edged Love
Victoria Findlay Wolfe

Edited to add: There were some mistakes in the previous post – we apologize and have republished with the correct changes.

Winners of the Michael Miller/Madrona Road Challenge

Without much ado….the winner’s (yes, there are two! Violet couldn’t pick just one!) of Violet’s Choice are:

Onwards by Casey York

Read about her store and see more photos on her blog.

IARA OLIVEIRA from the SPModern Quilt Guild (Brazil)

And for the Michael Miller picks that will be displayed at their booth during QuiltCon…

Pick Up Truck by Dsheck

Meetings and Parting by Sarah Oviatt

Wonky Road by  Jen A Quilting Jewel

Untitled by Tina ~ Seaside Stitches

Pillows by Kari at Craft Happy

Here Comes the Sun by misskadiebeth

 

Untitled by Amy at  The Cute Life Smiles

Untitled by Molly of the dallasMQG

Thank you once again to Michael Miller and Violet Craft for such a fun and inspiring challenge!

To view all the finished items, check out this group on Flickr.

QuiltCon Link Party!

Are you going to QuiltCon?

We thought it might be a good idea to get to know each other a little before hand. Sometimes when you are meeting new people that you’ve “known” online for years it can be a little strange. Hopefully, this will help us put the name of the blog with the face!

Add your picture (one of yourself would be great but not necessary).
Add your blog.
If you feel so inclined, write a blog post with five things we don’t know about you. If you are on Instagram, you have probably already done this!
Check out everyone else who is going! (I’ve gone first to break the ice)

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

PS We are working to get the links to show up in the blog post rather then opening in a new window! Just link up and hang in there! Thanks…

Another QuiltCon Fundraiser Quilt

If you’ve been reading the MQG Newsletter, you’ll know that the Block Challenge Quilt isn’t the only one at QuiltCon. This quilt, designed, pieced, and quilted by me (Elizabeth Hartman) especially for QuiltCon will also go home with one lucky attendee.

As with the Block Challenge Quilt, legal restrictions prevent us from selling tickets anywhere else.

This quilt is named Marmalade, and it measures 72″ x 92″.

While only one person will win the quilt, the pattern for Marmalade Quilts will be a part of the QuiltCon goodie bags.

For those of you who are interested, but can’t attend, it will also be available for sale after the event.

I love these giant diamonds. They’re each 36″ tall!

The block with the contrasting background was caused by a fabric shortage, but I liked it so much that I made it a part of the pattern.

I’m looking forward to teaching a workshop on making the blocks at QuiltCon.

I used scraps from making the front of the quilt to create this improvisationally-pieced band across the quilt back.

To complement the pointy diamonds, I free-motion quilted in a freestyle pattern of meandering points, which gives the quilt a really great texture.

I hope that those of you who are coming to QuiltCon will come to see this quilt !

QuiltCon Block Challenge: Finished Fundraiser Quilt

This is part of a series of posts about the QuiltCon Block Challenge.  You can see more photos of blocks submitted for this challenge here, and in the Block Challenge Flickr Group.  

To everyone who submitted a block for the QuiltCon Block Challenge, THANK YOU. As I opened and photographed each of your blocks, I could tell how much work you all put into them. It was extremely difficult to decide which blocks would be included in the fundraiser quilt. I hope you’re all as happy as I am with the way this quilt turned out!

I wanted to keep things simple to highlight all of the wonderful blocks, so I just added a minimal amount of Kona white between the blocks on the quilt top.

To mimic the graphic shapes in the piecing, I free-motion quilted in an allover pattern of interlocking boxes using Aurifil 50 wt. in white. I quilted on my home machine, using this process.

The binding is from Violet Craft’s Madrona Road collection for Michael Miller.

The quilt will be on display at QuiltCon. We hope that all of you who are there will come to see the quilt!

(Unfortunately, due to legal restrictions, we can only sell tickets at the event.)

As a way of giving something back to QuiltCon’s host city of Austin, Texas, we’re going to use the blocks that weren’t selected for this quilt to make quilts for each of the 46 beds at the Austin Children’s Shelter. We want to thank all of the guilds who volunteered to complete one or more of these quilts and we’ll be posting more about that process in Spring 2013.

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who submitted a block for this challenge!

QuiltCon Block Challenge: Quilt Back

This is part of a series of posts about the QuiltCon Block Challenge.  You can see more photos of blocks submitted for this challenge here, and in the Block Challenge Flickr Group.  

For the quilt back, I decided to spice things up with a few more of the challenge blocks.

The blocks were made by (left to right):

• Tamara Howard
• Lisa Hirsch of the Kansas City MQG
• Jan Myers
• Carol Turznik
• Andrew Montejo of the Los Angeles MQG
• Pamela Gavin of the Bakersfield MQG

The rest of the back is Kona Jade Green and Kona White.

I’ll be posting more photos of the finished quilt tomorrow!

***

As a way of giving something back to QuiltCon’s host city of Austin, Texas, we’re going to use the blocks that aren’t selected for this quilt to make quilts for each of the 46 beds at the Austin Children’s Shelter. This will be MQG’s first large-scale charity project and we look forward to both using the many beautiful blocks we received for the challenge and getting as many guilds as possible involved in the process! Participating guilds will receive a package of 7 or more blocks (much like the groups of blocks being shown in these blog posts) to expand into a 68″ X 88″ Twin bed quilt. This can be accomplished by adding blocks, adding negative space, or some combination of the two. The quilts will need to be machine quilted, bound, washed, and shipped to Austin in advance of QuiltCon. MQG will also be interested in hearing about each guild’s process and will feature the completed quilts in a series of blog posts in Spring 2013.

If your guild is interested in this project, please e-mail info@quiltcon.com to let us know.

QuiltCon Block Challenge: Quilt Top

This is part of a series of posts about the QuiltCon Block Challenge.  You can see more photos of blocks submitted for this challenge here, and in the Block Challenge Flickr Group.  

Here is the finished quilt top! I wanted to keep things as simple as possible, so I just sashed all the blocks in white, which blends nicely with the white that is in so many of the blocks already.

I love the fact that the top already has “MQG” and “QuiltCon” on it, but I also wanted to add the location and dates.

Rebecca Roach‘s Texas block seemed like a good place to add “Austin” in embroidery.

I knew that Karen Alexander was concerned that her armadillo didn’t have an eye, so I gave him one. I also embroidered the dates of QuiltCon along his back.

Hopefully Rebecca and Karen aren’t too upset about my changes to their blocks!

I’m really happy with how this turned out. Check back on Thursday to see what I did with the back.

***

As a way of giving something back to QuiltCon’s host city of Austin, Texas, we’re going to use the blocks that aren’t selected for this quilt to make quilts for each of the 46 beds at the Austin Children’s Shelter. This will be MQG’s first large-scale charity project and we look forward to both using the many beautiful blocks we received for the challenge and getting as many guilds as possible involved in the process! Participating guilds will receive a package of 7 or more blocks (much like the groups of blocks being shown in these blog posts) to expand into a 68″ X 88″ Twin bed quilt. This can be accomplished by adding blocks, adding negative space, or some combination of the two. The quilts will need to be machine quilted, bound, washed, and shipped to Austin in advance of QuiltCon. MQG will also be interested in hearing about each guild’s process and will feature the completed quilts in a series of blog posts in Spring 2013.

If your guild is interested in this project, please e-mail info@quiltcon.com to let us know.

QuiltCon Block Challenge: Block Arrangement

This is part of a series of posts about the QuiltCon Block Challenge.  You can see more photos of blocks submitted for this challenge here, and in the Block Challenge Flickr Group.  

This is the block arrangement that I’ve planned for the quilt top, which will be about 62″ x 82″.

Given the size and number of the blocks, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to add much negative space without making the quilt way too big. I decided to concentrate on the 12-1/2″ dimension that was common to all of the blocks and arrange them in 6 rows that would each finish at 12″ high.

Since the other dimension of each block varies, there are different numbers of blocks among the rows and they aren’t arranged in a regular grid.

With such a variety of blocks, and such a large footprint, it can be tricky to use a design wall to plan the layout. Here’s a little trick that I used instead.

I started by putting all of the blocks up on the wall, without regard for how they would look in the finished quilt. Then, I took a photo, scaled it to fit on a piece of printer paper and printed it out.

Next, I cut out each block, which made it possible for me to just move them around on my work table until I found an arrangement that I liked.

(This is also a good strategy if you want to see what your blocks would look like amid different colors of negative space fabric.)

Here it is! I’m so happy with the finished arrangement. Come back tomorrow to see how I finished the top.

***

As a way of giving something back to QuiltCon’s host city of Austin, Texas, we’re going to use the blocks that aren’t selected for this quilt to make quilts for each of the 46 beds at the Austin Children’s Shelter. This will be MQG’s first large-scale charity project and we look forward to both using the many beautiful blocks we received for the challenge and getting as many guilds as possible involved in the process! Participating guilds will receive a package of 7 or more blocks (much like the groups of blocks being shown in these blog posts) to expand into a 68″ X 88″ Twin bed quilt. This can be accomplished by adding blocks, adding negative space, or some combination of the two. The quilts will need to be machine quilted, bound, washed, and shipped to Austin in advance of QuiltCon. MQG will also be interested in hearing about each guild’s process and will feature the completed quilts in a series of blog posts in Spring 2013.

If your guild is interested in this project, please e-mail info@quiltcon.com to let us know.

QuiltCon Fundraiser Quilt Blocks: Group 5

This is part of a series of posts about the QuiltCon Block Challenge.  You can see more photos of blocks submitted for this challenge here, and in the Block Challenge Flickr Group.  

And here are the final four! Read about these four blocks today, then check back on Monday for an update on my progress putting the quilt together.

Eom Jae Young of the Los Angeles MQG

This is such a fun composition. I love the rectangular block shape and the variety of sizes and colors among the pieced squares. Graphic and beautiful!

Block by Lora Douglas of the Gainesville, FL, MQG

The layout of this block is simple, yet so effective. I love how the colors shine against the soft gray background, and Lora did a masterful job of piecing those skinny crossbars between the colorful rectangles.

Block by Holly Broadland of the Vancouver MQG

Such beautiful, clean lines in this Mondrian-inspired block. I appreciate how effortless it looks, even though I know that it must have taken some time to plan and piece.

Blocks by Louise Gates of the Chicago MQG

I couldn’t choose between these two blocks that Louise made, so I’m going to treat them as a set and use them both. I love the variety of widths in these pieced strips and the very slight wonkiness, which adds movement but still looks very structured.

***

As a way of giving something back to QuiltCon’s host city of Austin, Texas, we’re going to use the blocks that aren’t selected for this quilt to make quilts for each of the 46 beds at the Austin Children’s Shelter. This will be MQG’s first large-scale charity project and we look forward to both using the many beautiful blocks we received for the challenge and getting as many guilds as possible involved in the process! Participating guilds will receive a package of 7 or more blocks (much like the groups of blocks being shown in these blog posts) to expand into a 68″ X 88″ Twin bed quilt. This can be accomplished by adding blocks, adding negative space, or some combination of the two. The quilts will need to be machine quilted, bound, washed, and shipped to Austin in advance of QuiltCon. MQG will also be interested in hearing about each guild’s process and will feature the completed quilts in a series of blog posts in Spring 2013.

If your guild is interested in this project, please e-mail info@quiltcon.com to let us know.

QuiltCon Fundrasier Quilt Blocks: Group 4

This is part of a series of posts about the QuiltCon Block Challenge.  You can see more photos of blocks submitted for this challenge here, and in the Block Challenge Flickr Group.   

Today’s blocks are all QuiltCon-specific in one way or another.

Block by Sarah Chin

I love this giant patchwork representation of the logo. It will be a perfect addition to the raffle quilt.

Block by Rebecca Roach of the Austin MQG

Rebecca did such a great job of replicating the shape of Texas. What a great way to celebrate QuiltCon’s location!

Block by Karen Alexander of the Austin MQG

Pattern is adapted from the book Creature Comforts by Barbara Brackman and Marie Shirer.

According to Karen, the armadillo is an important animal in Austin culture, so I think this little guy will be right at home on the raffle quilt.

Block by Dani Miller of the Roanoke MQG

And, of course, this MQG block will also fit into the mix nicely. I love the shape of these letters.

***

As a way of giving something back to QuiltCon’s host city of Austin, Texas, we’re going to use the blocks that aren’t selected for this quilt to make quilts for each of the 46 beds at the Austin Children’s Shelter. This will be MQG’s first large-scale charity project and we look forward to both using the many beautiful blocks we received for the challenge and getting as many guilds as possible involved in the process! Participating guilds will receive a package of 7 or more blocks (much like the groups of blocks being shown in these blog posts) to expand into a 68″ X 88″ Twin bed quilt. This can be accomplished by adding blocks, adding negative space, or some combination of the two. The quilts will need to be machine quilted, bound, washed, and shipped to Austin in advance of QuiltCon. MQG will also be interested in hearing about each guild’s process and will feature the completed quilts in a series of blog posts in Spring 2013.

If your guild is interested in this project, please e-mail info@quiltcon.com to let us know.