Design Wall Monday 9/29/2025

There is a brand new project up on my design wall this week! This is my Exploring Complex Curves quilt top. I think it looks like planets and the moon in the night sky.

Exploring Complex Curves, 24.5" square

I'm not terribly up to date on what's happening in the modern quilt world, but I did go to QuiltCon when it was here in Atlanta in 2023, and that's when I first saw some of Audrey Esarey's works. Let me tell you, they knocked me out! My favorite was her quilt Aura No.1, which took 1st place in the Minimalist Design category. 

Aura No.1, 2022 by Audrey Esarey

The simplicity of this quilt blew my mind. Audrey explained in her presentation to the guild that there are only two seams in this quilt, one on each side of the light blue ring which is pieced, not appliqued, to the purple background. It looks like the background is four squares pieced together, but it is actually a single piece of fabric, and the different colors of her quilting stitching are what make the color change. You can see many more of her amazing quilts on the gallery page of her website Cotton and Bourbon.

I had the very good fortune to get a spot in one of Audrey's workshops over the weekend. Our class was called Drafting Complex Curves. We learned how to draft our own patterns with curves, then we also did some piecing of curves. We began by drafting a Drunkard's Path block, and then we pieced that block in fabric. No more need to buy acrylic templates for this kind of block.

Drunkard's Path block, 6.5" square

The next exercise was making a larger piece with curves. We had the choice of doing the Quick Curves exercise... 

Quick Curves exercise, 13" x 17"

or we could start with the larger Exploring Complex Curves piece. Since I already had a fair amount of experience with sewing curves, I dove right into the larger project, which is the piece shown at the top of this post. I made the Quick Curves block the next day, and added borders to get it to the right size for a placemat.

Here are all three of my pieces together.

The workshop was very informative and a lot of fun. Audrey is an excellent teacher who really makes both the drafting and the piecing part of dealing with curves manageable. I hope to be able to take more classes with her in the future. She has a wide variety of quilt patterns available on her website Cotton and Bourbon, and she teaches some of her patterns as virtual classes. I urge you to check out her amazing quilts!

I'm  linking up with:

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

Monday Musings at Songbird Designs

Wednesday Wait Loss at Inquiring Quilter 

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Brag About Your Beauties at From Bolt to Beauty

Oh Scrap! at Quilting is more fun than Housework

Happy quilting everyone!

Julie in GA