Here is my quilt for the Pantone Radiant Orchid Quilt Challenge. Normally I don't find out about these kinds of things until after the fact, but a couple weeks ago I happened to see a post about this years challenge. I was a little bit excited about this one since I am a huge fan of the color! Just ask my favorite shirt...or my handbag...or my roll of masking tape. :) Usually it takes me the whole year to warm up to the "color of the year" --so by the time I get around to making a quilt using it...there's a new color of the year! :) This year, that was not a problem! I already had some good fabrics in my stash so I figured I could whip out a Mini in no time flat...but let's talk about it...I am finishing this up with less than one hour to spare. Woah. That was close.

This mini quilt is 21" x 27". It actually took me a little while to figure out what I wanted to do. Surprise, surprise. I thought about it a lot and even came up with what I thought was a really good idea. I mocked it up in Inkscape and showed my husband and he looked at it kinda funny and said "I don't get it." So that kinda ruined my enthusiasm for the whole project...since it was Sunday night-- I had less than a week to get it done and I was now back to the drawing board. I got all frustrated and decided I would probably just forget it. I went upstairs and held the baby for a while. When I came back downstairs I just started messing around in Inkscape, looking at old files...and found a quilt design I made last year...the Circles and Rings Baby Quilt. Somehow, ten short minutes later I had come up with this design. And I totally loved it. Luckily, my husband did as well. (Good thing too or I might have fired him again for killing team morale). 

This quilt is entirely appliqued using fusible web (I use Pellon 805). I stitched around all the shapes using a blanket stitch in matching thread. Then, rather than drive myself crazy trying to figure out a cool way to quilt it, I decided to just do a grid (similar to the original quilt) only I decided to make an imperfect grid that I drew on with disappearing ink before quilting it. Then I bound it in my favorite black Alexander Henry June bug dot. It's the same fabric I used when I made my small wall quilts a few years ago...I am hoarding that fabric...but I think it was perfect for this quilt so I figured it would be ok to use a little bit of it!

I haven't decided what the fate of this quilt will be yet...I have a friend who just had a birthday who might like it, and one of my daughters wants it on the wall in her room. And I made a crib/baby size pattern for it!! I made one for the Circles and Rings Quilt but loved this one so much I added a bonus layout to the pattern so you can make either quilt (or both!) with the same pattern (get it HERE)! Glad I didn't give up on this challenge!!