Rock The Block by Joe Cunningham

I am a year and a half into what I like to call my formal education in Modern Quilting. It started with goign to QuiltCon in 2024, where I experienced the closest thing I could imagine to having my mind blown in a positive way. Sadly, I have had quite a bit of wexperience with tragedy but this was spectacular. I have been doing a modern twist on traditional quilting forever, even though I did not know it. However, using a pattern was pretty much the norm--I do the color and I might change up the layout, but I never considered just winging it.

So this is my second year in and I was ready to try classes outside of those at QuiltCon--I have never packed things for a class there that I have been happy with, and it is hard to recover from that when trying to learn a new thing. So when the Minnesota Quilters Quilt Show list of classes and teachers came up, I was motivated and excited to give it a try. Joe Cunningham is a teacher that quilters in my guild really like, asn so I picked the least "out there" of his design classes and took the plunge. I really had a great day, and even though I didn't totally follow directions, I ended up very happy with what I made. Not to mention that I used a fabric I had had for over a decade and was very pleased with how it performed.

Mama Loves Quilts--Minimalism

I listened to a short lecture by Nicole Nesbitt on the Modern Quilt Guild webste and it was helpful to me in thinking more about how to approach a minimalist quilt. She offered these thoughts on "What is Minimalist?" * It is whole cloth like * Bold and Graphic * Lots of Negative Space * Solids Regin--it doesn't have to be all solid, but it often is * Quilting is Supreme--where there is little in terms of variety in design, there is room for a lot of creative design with the quilting She taught a class at QuiltCon this year and I hope that I get a chance to take one with her some time in the future--if not, she has a quilt design on the Modern Quilt Guild website that I might do a deep dive on.