Rise Over Run Quilt

If you’ve been with me for a while, you probably know that 1) I love a challenge and 2) the QuiltCon fabric challenge has become a sort of tradition for me. It’s the one category I’ve entered every year since my first QuiltCon in 2018! So even though time has been scarce, I had to make something happen for this year.

My problem? I could NOT settle on a design. I went through at least 3 or 4 totally different design ideas over the last few months, never really feeling happy with any of them. By the time October rolled around, I knew I had to just pick something and go with it. After one more round of brainstorming, I finally landed on an architectural design directly inspired by the facade of the Stadskantoor Leyweg building in Den Haag, Netherlands.

When I ordered the challenge fabric back in summer, I only got 1/2 yard of each — so that, plus the tight timeline, drove me to make a mini quilt. I knew foundation paper piecing was probably the right technique, but I tried making the block “traditionally” nonetheless because I thought it might save time. That method was a disaster, so paper piecing it was!

Each block has 3 sections, but each section only has 2-3 pieces, so they came together quickly enough. The trickiest part was lining up the corners as I joined blocks and then rows. Many pins were required!

I thought hard about quilting this on my domestic machine because it was small, and because I wanted to quilt on a diagonal. I figured it might be faster than having to set up my longarm (which I hadn’t used since June)…but ultimately I knew I’d be more satisfied with the outcome of this fairly dense motif by using my longarm channel locks. So out to the garage I went!

I loaded the quilt on the diagonal first, using many pins to keep things straight as I echoed the slanted lines. After that pass, I removed the quilt and trimmed the backing to about 4″ on each side. Then it went back on the longarm for the horizontal lines. This is the first time I’ve re-loaded a quilt on this particular machine but thankfully it went pretty well! I had to bit of stretching/smooshing (technical term, ha) to make sure the horizontal lines were properly aligned. I didn’t get it perfect, but I definitely got close enough.

I used most of my yellow, pink, and brown fabric for the top, but I had plenty of blue, gray, and green left over for the backing. When you load a quilt on the diagonal as I did with this one, the backing seams end up diagonal, which complemented the design on the front. And then on a whim, I made the facing strips line up with the backing! That might be my favorite detail of the whole thing, and it’s not even visible. Ha.

Since this quilt was so small, I was able to take photos by simply laying a sheet on the ground underneath the quilt, and standing on a stool to shoot down.

And finally, name! The strong, sloping lines of the building facade that inspired my quilt stand out in the piecing and quilting. The phrase “rise over run” is commonly used to describe the mathematical formula for the slope of a line. As soon as I thought of it, I knew Rise Over Run was the perfect name!

I submitted this for QuiltCon 2026. Fingers crossed that it gets juried into the show!

The stats:

• Quilt measures 16″ x 27″.
• All fabrics (top, backing, and facing) are Windham Artisan Cotton in Taupe/Lt Gray, Dark Coral/White, Yellow/Copper, Green/Blue, Blue/White, and Black/Copper.
• Batting is Quilters Dream 80/20.
• Pieced with Aurifil 50 wt thread in dove.
• Quilted on my APQS Millie with Glide thread in Military Gold.