"Kiwi Peel" by Ben Darby won First Place - Modern Traditionalism at QuiltCon 2024.

QuiltCon 2024 Artist Statement: "Based on inspiration seen in an upholstery fabric, I used computer drawing software to quilt overlapping distorted circles, and had templates made for the resulting shapes. The fabrics are all Alison Glass Kaleidoscope yarn dyes. This is the second of what may become a series of quilts using these shapes."

Artist Statement 2: "This quilt uses the same template shapes used in my Corona Wedding Dish quilt. While that quilt used paper piecing for the melons, this time I had new laser-cut acrylic templates made for the melons, to go with the original templates for the centers. These shapes were originally inspired by an upholstery fabric. For fabrics, I used a selection of cool(ish) colors from Alison Glass's Kaleidoscope yarn dyes. These colors were chosen in part to make use of leftovers from my Cosmic Curves quilt. The backing is a print by e bond.

The quilting is all straight lines, 1/2 inch apart. The green-centered circles are quilted with near-horizontal lines, randomly tilted between blocks, while blue-centered circles have near-vertical quilting. This results in crosshatching in the melons. I matched thread colors to the centers, without regard to the colors of the melons, so there are two thread colors in each crosshatched melon.

As I was assembling blocks together, I became concerned about being able to bind the deep inside corners. I decided to add small fillets to simplify the binding. This idea for fillets was somewhat inspired by an old DWR quilt that was among my Dad's possessions. (I'm not sure of the origin of this quilt.)"

Techniques Used: Machine Pieced, Machine Quilted without a Frame (Domestic)

(Main Quilt Photo from quiltcon.com ; Detail, Back, and Inspiration Photos from Ben Darby's website - huntspatchquilts.blogspot.com ; QuiltCon Floor Photo, Sign, and Ribbon Photos from lorena_in_syd Instragram Page)