The Big Pantone Reveal! (hint: it’s a pillow)

Have you ever participated in the Pantone online quilting challenge?  Two years ago I decided to delve right in and created this beauty for Tango Tangerine.  It was my first online competition and so much fun!

It hung in my sewing room until my daughter recently took it for her room.  That’s what I call a  happy ending for a project.

Then last year the color was emerald so I came up with this quilt, which qualified for the finished tops category, and it hasn’t moved past that stage.   I’m sad to say that this 2013’s project outcome isn’t as happy as 2012’s. Destined to be a WIP forever???

But, on the bright side, I was able to make this table runner and enter two categories! 

It was hard to part with, but I sent it to my sister for her table.

Do you know this year’s Pantone Color?  Radiant Orchid!!!  A beautiful shade of purple which just happens to be my favorite color ever! 

I entered two projects for this contest.  First up is a baby quilt that qualifies for the Finished Quilts Category.  This quilt measures 42” x 42” and is made with mostly stash fabrics (I had to purchase the binding online).  It was fun to make and I liked pairing up the yellow and gray with shades of purple, from orchid to plum.

The blocks are made with some awesome fabrics by Thomas Knauer, Joel Dewberry, Denyse Schmidt, and Anna Maria Horner to name a few.   And there’s even fabric designed by DC Modern Quilt Guild’s own Jessie Aller for In the Beginning Fabrics--two prints from her line Jasmine Tea.

You can see there’s a nice selection of various plums, orchids, magenta, and fuchsia colors.  I just love this quilt!  I made another larger version of this design and tweaked some of the construction in a quilt called Dreamcatcher. 

The back has a nice large scale print by AMH with plum, orchid, and a peachy shade bisected by a gray, yellow, and white Amy Butler print.  I think all the colors on the back nicely mimic the colors on the front but do it in “large scale style,” which can be more appropriate on a back.

And then, I have one more project to share for this year’s competition.  I really held nothing back on this last project.  First off, it’s a Jen Kingwell pattern, which means it is completely amazing!  It took me a long time to piece this baby together.  I used a combination of hand and machine piecing.  Did I mention it has curves?  That I picked nearly every single curve and sewed them all at least two times?  And a lot of hand quilting?  Okay, time for the big reveal…

The pillow measures 19” x 25” as per the pattern, which should fit a standard size pillow case plumply.  I used some stash fabrics for the hearts and letters, plus quite a few new purchases of fabric including Safari Moon, True Colors, the backing print by Joel Dewberry, and the Couture Orchid fabric by Michael Miller for the binding.

I am thrilled to pieces with how this pillow turned out.  The hearts look like hearts.  The seams aren’t perfect, but good enough for me! 

I used perle thread to outline the hearts and letters, but decided the linen background needed something more, so I used some thicker 12 wt Aurifil threads in pinks and purples to add a pop of color. 

I quilted tiny v stitches all around the “love” section of the pillow to bring more attention to that section.  After a while it became apparent that the v’s look like little hearts.  Yay!  Just the perfect embellishment! 

Always, with the very few things I’ve hand quilted, I only quilt through the top and batting, then add the back later and machine quilt in the ditch to secure the layers together.  I used Aurifil #2324 which matches the Essex linen in natural perfectly.

It did take someone who machine sews everything (including binding) many, many movies to do all the hand stitching on this pillow.  But every few minutes as I could see progress, I was motivated to just keep stitching and before I knew it, the pillow front was done.  And I think my husband kind of liked my company while we watched a few movies I would have otherwise skipped if I wasn’t hand sewing.

A piece of muslin was added to the back of the pillow front and I stitched in the ditch around a few sections.  Then I did one outline around the perimeter and was ready to add on the envelope back pieces and binding.

The binding is machine attached to the back then brought over to the front and elegantly zig-zagged down.

This sweet pillow is destined for my daughter’s room as soon as I get that thing painted.  New bunk beds have been sitting in boxes in our garage since January, but I haven’t had a chance to prep the room yet.  Soon, I promise, this pillow will find it’s new home.

Thanks for reading this long post!  Go check out all the other entries at On the Windy Side if you want to get your purple fix for the day and see all the gorgeous entries.

Linking up to Fort Worth Fabric Studio today.

Holy Tornado & Holy Snowstorm!

About a week ago, a small tornado came through our neighborhood, less than a 1/4 mile from our house.  The winds toppled a giant of a pine tree in our front yard.  The tree blocked off our driveway for several hours and thankfully missed our neighbor’s house by a measly 5 feet.  In the photo below you can get a sense that the rootball was taller than my minivan!   I told the kids instead of joining the pool this year, we’ll just pour some concrete in that hole and have our own swimming pool.  A few years ago another tornado blasted right through our backyard, ripping out nearly all the trees and knocking two of them on our roof.  Tornadoes?  An earthquake?  Now another snowstorm?  Seriously.  I am done with crazy weather!

We are expecting 6-10 inches of snow today.  I spent last night after the kids went to bed putting a new quilt on the longarm frame ready to be quilted today in daylight.  I’m trying a few new things this time.  Gray thread instead of white.  I fooled around with the tension a little after watching a few videos on You Tube. (Thank you, Mary, for that advice!  I learned so much in just a few minutes!)  And this time I am going to try basting the quilt first with the machine to avoid any tucks on the back, which happened with the most recent quilt I had on there.   I didn’t notice the tuck until I’d taken it off the frame, and while it was small and pretty insignificant, I don’t want that to happen again!

This quilt is quite large by my standards, 70” x 70”, which would have been doable on my domestic machine, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed the process.  I’m going to be quilting swirls all over this one to practice because I will be quilting a friend’s quilt very soon and I want to have my swirls lookin’ good!

As soon as I get this quilt done, I’ll be moving on to making a baby quilt and making something for the Pantone 2014 Challenge.  I wasn’t sure I’d have the time, but since purple is my all time favorite color, I decided this was my chance to make something awesomely purple, so I picked this pillow cover pattern by Jen Kingwell in the February issue of American Patchwork and Quilting.

I ordered two different solids in orchid that were supposed to arrive today via USPS (probably more like Wednesday at this point with the 4 inches of snow already on the ground, but I’m still holding out hope the package miraculously arrives in my mailbox this afternoon) and I’ll use that as my starting point for picking the rest of the fabrics. 

So far I picked out a few “orchids” from my stash, but I really need the solid before I commit to a shade.  I’m really partial to the purple in the Denyse Schmidt fabric, but I don’t have a lot in that color, so I’ll probably go with the lighter color so I have more fabrics to choose from.  But after looking at this photo on my computer monitor, maybe all the colors look good together.  Are you doing the challenge?

Strangely enough, I realized the other day that I painted our downstairs bathroom orchid last month. 

I’ll tell ya, it’s difficult to get a good photo of a bathroom without the paint or mirror reflecting the light.  This is the very photogenic corner of the back wall.  You can see part of the lovely owl picture my husband reluctantly put up and endures looking at every day.  The paint color is called “flower market” and is a mistint I picked up at Lowes.  You now, picking paint used to be a huge headache for me, but lately I’ve just been buying mistints off the shelf.  No more agonizing over the right shade, and you can’t beat the price!

Have a great day!