2014 Pantone Quilt Challenge - Shades of Purplelicious

Tangerine? Too scary for me. Emerald? Not my shade of Emerald. Radiant Orchid? Sign me up!

The 2014 Pantone Quilt Challenge with On The Windy Side and Play Crafts is on and the last day to link up is tomorrow! I'm entering Purplelicious to the mini category.

If you haven't met Purplelicious before, let me introduce you.

Purplelicious has many shades to its personality. There's plenty of beautiful Radiant Orchid. Purplelicious values its darker and lighter sides too. It's a complex mix of fruits and flower colours -- eggplant, hibiscus, berry, mulberry, tulip, cerise, violet, lavender. It's a bit of a free spirit though and refuses to be tied down to just one colour. Purplelicious teases us with pops of white, grey, red and some, dare I say it, Tangerine!

In addition to hanging out in my kitchen, Purplelicious enjoys long skates on the Rideau Canal;

Making snow angels;

Playing hockey;

Basking in brisk frigid winter sunsets;

And getting up close and personal. xo

  

It measures 24" by 36-ish" and loves its wonky edges. ;)

Thank you to Adrienne and Play Crafts, as well as the sponsors, for putting together this great challenge!

TGIFF! - Purplelicious

Purplelicious enjoys Winterlude on the Rideau Canal

Joy. That's what I feel when I look at this quilt and I've been looking at it a lot since I put it up a few days ago.

I just love purple, although it's not a colour I've been successful in decorating with in the past. Lesson learned: Do not paint a small room, which has little natural light and dark wood accents, eggplant purple -- it feels like it's always night. BUT, you can make a quilt with those colours and hang it on a light neutral wall. Much better. :)

This quilt has been a journey, hasn't it? We talked about it here and here and here.

I'm excited about this piece because it feels like all the colour, design and composition reading I've been doing over the past couple of years has come to fruition in something that didn't feel forced and that reflects me.

New to me in this piece - wonky edges and improv quilting. Okay, two wonky edges; let's not go crazy here. The sides are parallel.

The improv quilting was a challenge. I looked closely at Jean Wells' work for ideas. I didn't have the appetite for changing threads to match each purple fabric so I picked sections of similar toned purples to use either a warm purple (Aurifil #1240) or cool purple (Aurifil #2581). Very happy with that decision and something I'll do again. I also used Aurifil #5009 and #2277 for the oranges. I left the whites and greys unquilted.

So what do I mean by improv quilting? I wanted a bit of an organic, irregular look to the quilting to complement the improv piecing.

Some wobbly lines, wonky square spirals, loose aztec motifs and general wonky circuit board-like motifs filled in the purple areas to give it texture and invite the viewer to come closer to see where the quilting goes. I've spent so much time trying to make my quilting motifs look perfect (not that it is ever achieved), that it felt very odd to intentionally make it look wonky. Does that make sense?

Purplelicious finishes at 24" by 36"-ish. :)

Isn't it fun to see where playing with fabric takes you?

I'm linking up with my favourite party TGIFF!, which is over at Amy's Crafty Shenanigans. Come join us!

A Purplelicious Top

I hope you aren't tired of purple yet, because I finished the Purplelicious top. Your comments seemed heavily weighed towards the dark colours and mixed colour border so...I decided to see what it would look like with a mixed dark purple border, but just two colours. I tried the Purple and Eggplant (Kona colours), but the Purple seemed too blue.

I finally settled on Eggplant and Hibiscus -- dark, but warmer:

Lots of partial seams for the final piecing. That and the bias edges from the improv piecing made me worried that this would be hard to keep flat, but it's looking okay so far. We'll see how it quilts. Fingers crossed!

I'm kind of liking these wonky edges. Something else to think about as I quilt this...

Hope you are having a great day!

Purplelicious - A Work In Progress

I promised you more purple and today you are going to get it! Remember the purple improv blocks from a few weeks ago?

I found some more purple scraps from Hard Core and added those into the soup. Some of the purples from Hard Core are warmer and I think that helps. Maybe? I think I have the blocks about where I'd like them and in a layout that I'm liking.

Now, I'm thinking about the border and considering these options:

1) Kona Purple:

2) Kona Eggplant:

3) Kona Tulip:

4) Kona Berry:

5) Kona Dark Violet:

6) Heritage Solids Magenta:

7) Mix of medium value purples:

Decisions, decisions! Which purple do you prefer?

I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network and to W.i.P. Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Thanks Monika and Lee for hosting such great linkies!

What are you working on this week?