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This past weekend, I traveled with a friend to Raleigh, NC. She invited me to attend Quiltcon with her and I readily accepted the invite. The show was held in the Raleigh Convention Center. One side of the convention floor was packed with vendors selling everything from thread and notions to fabrics to longarm quilting machines. I can’t pass up cute chicken fabric and found “The Henhouse,” by Gingiber for Moda Fabrics. Adorable, right ??

 

 

The other side of the floor was dedicated to the display of hundreds of quilts made by members of the Modern Quilt Guild, either as teams or individuals.

 

I was quite unprepared for the exhibit. As I posted on BlueSky, these quilts were not your grandmother’s quilts of yore. The quilts on display were never intended to grace a bed. Instead, the quilters painted with cuts of fabric and intricate stitches to create works of art, many of which were museum quality pieces.
 

Quiltcon is a yearly event with the host city changing from year to year. Next year’s event will be in Atlanta, Georgia. This quilting extravaganza is put on by the Modern Quilt Guild (MQD) which its website states “is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support and encourage the growth and development of modern quilting through art, education, and community.” 

 

There are several characteristics often seen in modern quilting, and as MQD explains, “while these characteristics can be a common thread among many modern quilts, this list is not comprehensive of every attribute in modern quilting, nor is it a constraint to what can be in a modern quilt: 

• Bold use of color
• High contrast & graphic areas of color
• Minimalism
• Maximalism
• Improvisational piecing
• Expansive negative space
• Alternate grid work
• Modern traditionalism

 

In modern traditionalism, traditional patchwork quilt blocks, such as a log cabin block, and traditional styles, such as boro and kantha, are often reimagined using modern quilting elements, such as asymmetry, color, and scale.”

 

I walked up and down the aisles, taking in the beauty and creativity that each quilt presented. Several quilts used cuts of fabric to form pixels which turned into faces, one of which was Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That quilt was machine quilted with a sunflower pattern, the official flower of Ukraine.

 

There were many social commentary quilts on display and they were powerful with their messaging. One quilt was an American flag, dripping in blood. Another depicted a scene in a detention cell, black and brown hands reaching through the bars towards a tattered American flag. Still another depicted a single sheet of ruled school paper appliqued with the words “This is the part of History that makes school kids ask ‘Why didn’t anyone do something to stop them?’” 

 

I have not shown any pictures here, as I do not have copyright permission to do so. However, you can click on the link below to see some of the award winners through MQD’s website:

 

https://www.themodernquiltguild.com/quiltcon-home/winners/quiltcon-2026-winners

 

The exhibit has spun my head in an entirely different direction when it comes to defining what is a quilt. While all of the quilts on exhibit bore the traditional “trappings,” of a top layer, batting layer, and backing, what resulted was something new and exciting—elevating the art of quilting to a new level. 

 

I am excited to see the evolution of quilting and hope to venture to Atlanta next year to take in the artistry that will be displayed and to see if the social commentary changes to a more hopeful dream for America.