try all the things - Pantone quilt challenge

I've finished up my quilt from Debbie's everyday improv class just in time to enter it into the Pantone color of the year challenge! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the beginning, a few weeks ago when I selected my color palette for the workshop. I had bought a yard of bright peri, the closest Kona match to Pantone's color of the year, Ultraviolet, way back when the color was announced. I had no idea what I would do with it at the time. I began looking at different color palette's that contained this color, and in the end, settled on these five colors for my workshop blocks

In addition to the Kona bright peri, I have four Moda Bella solids. Imagine my surprise when the MQG announced their color palette for next year's charity quilt. Remarkably similar!

I had so much fun mastering all of the techniques Debbie taught us last Saturday. Ok, all but one. The layered circle proved to be very frustrating for me! After trying my hardest to make one, I ended up with a total mess. I announced on instagram that I was voting my layered circle off the improv island. And so I did. But the other 14 techniques we learned are all represented in my finished quilt top.

I loved my finished top so much that I was tempted to send it off to one of my talented longarm friends to finish it, simply so I wouldn't mess it up. But, deep in my heart, I knew that my improv deserved to be quilted by me, on my domestic machine. I debated a simple grid pattern (again, why ruin a good thing? keep it simple). In the end, I decided to jump in and tackle matchstick quilting for the first time. Why not?

I used three colors to stitch organic lines, approximately 1/8" apart, a thread that matched the ultra violet for most of the quilt, a lime green and a deep teal (not shown here). In the end, it took me about 9 hours to quilt this tiny quilt (admittedly, much of this time was spent cleaning lint out of my machine, winding bobbins, and rethreading). It took 4 spools of thread and 8 bobbins to complete the quilting and I must say, it was worth every stitch! Honestly, I could use a good massage right now, my neck and shoulders are so tight.

At this point, it seemed silly not to try one more new thing, so I tackled faced binding. This quilt just seemed to call for it, as I felt that a regular binding would take away from the improv aspect. I read many, many tutorials, combined my favorite parts of each, and the binding was much easier than I expected! 

And so, I've named this quilt "try all the things" because I did! And I'm calling this a big success. It's my entry into the Pantone Quilt Challenge, coming in right under the wire. Whew! It just barely made it into the mini category, measuring 27" x 30". Also, as required by the challenge rules, I am a US quilter.

I can't wait to dive deeper into improv. I just love the jumping off point this gives me, a sampler of ideas to draw from.