Modern Quilt Guild Kona Solids Challenge

Thursday night was the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild meeting. I was able to attend the first part, which was the unveiling of our challenge quilts. Three months ago, we were each given charm packs of Kona Solids to turn into quilts. And those three months flew by! Here are all the fabulous quilts brought in by the guild members:

Andrea’s super-modern hounds tooth inspired quilt, with a modern alphabet “G” in the corner. I love how she went from light in the top left all the way down to dark in the top right! I can’t imagine how long it takes to sort color by value like that!!

The back of Cola’s (of Made by Cola) quilt. She couldn’t make it to the meeting, but managed to get her quilt done and brought it in early to share!

Here is the front of Cola’s pretty quilt – I love the fun clover-leaf design! The blocks are so simple, and so is her quilting, but the result is anything but plain and ordinary! And her quilting is super-straight! I’m going to have to ask her how she manages to do that…

This is Jan’s fun quilt. I love the snake in the grass! She did some fun free-piecing on the snake, which I love (and will get to try out soon).

Maria made these great stacked bricks! Another fun, simple design with a stunning result! The colors really get to “pop” in this quilt!

Patti of infamous charm square pinwheel tutorial fame (there will be another post on this in the future, I promise) made this great wonky-pinwheel quilt.

Tami said her original design was much different… but we love how this turned out! I wish I had a close-up of her fabulous quilting!

The front of Tracy’s quilt is great, and then she turned it around…

and we all gasped in amazement at the back! I just LOVE pieced backs like this!!

Vic of the Zany Quilter and I swapped charm packs – I snagged all the cool colors, she got all the warm. Here is her beautiful, warm, sunny quilt!

And here is mine… which is quilted but not squared up or bound. Yup, I’m VERY behind… but I was so glad I got it to this stage! I was up until about 3am the night before getting it quilted. The quilt was inspired by Summer Sorbet by Rachel Griffith over at ps i quilt.

I don’t have many quilts I’ve quilted myself. I know how to piece a quilt, and can do a pretty good job… but doing the quilting (the stitching on top through all the layers to hold them together) is a whole different art form that I’m still working on! I did the quilting all with my walking foot. I’m not quite ready for free-motion yet… but I’ll get there.

Here is a group shot of everyone with their quilts!

And here is a picture of the winners!

There were three categories. Best big (Patti’s pinwheels took that title) best small (which went to Tracy), and best rule breaker – which I won! The rules were that you had to use the entire charm pack, add 2 solid colors, and bring in a finished quilt. I broke the rules right off by swapping colors with Vic… and then broke them further by bringing in a top that wasn’t complete. I’m sure the voting was close… everyone’s quilts are AWESOME!

I still can’t believe how lucky we are to have a Modern Quilt Guild here in Vegas! The guild is still pretty new, and growing, but the talent in the room on the last Thursday of every month is palpable – and contagious!

I can’t wait for “moore!” : )

Always,