Marsala - Colour of the Year

I wasn't immediately inspired by this year's Pantone Colour of the Year but I started a Pinterest Board and slowly found some inspiration. I was especially inspired by African textiles including bark and mud cloth. I like the black, white and Marsala-ish red/brown together. I sketched out my ideas and decided to make a sort of sampler quilt, challenging myself to work out how to make a variety of different designs.

I looked in my stash and started adding a bit of Marsala to my shopping basket if I saw it on sale. I ended up with a fat quarter from Allison Glasses Field Day, a fat quarter of Flight Canvas in Paprika, a skinny quarter of a Parson Gray print and my personal closest-to-Marsala fabric was a 1/2 yard from Oakshotts Lyon collection. I added 4 fat quarters of Marsala-ish Kona, some Kona Bone and a few metres of black Ditte fabric from Ikea.

I made two items for the Colour of the Year Quilt contest, a quilt and matching cushion. Except I ran out of time so it's a Top and matching cushion! The top measures 76"x58", it's the biggest quilt I've made so far.

I used a mix of different piecing techniques and really pushed myself!

The cushion has the same feathers that run down the left of the quilt. It's 20"x20" with the binding making the space for the cushion slightly smaller.

I tried out hand quilting for the first time to really emphasise the fletching section, I'm really happy with how it turned out!

Thanks for looking, I really enjoyed making these!