The Pantone Color of the Year is one of those things that you either love or hate. For the past few years, it just hasn’t been my thing. This year’s color, Living Coral, is absolutely something I can get behind in a big way. I decided to make a 2-tone quilt (including the hand quilting) as my entry for the challenge hosted by Bryan House Quilts and No Hats in the House.

I used American Made Brand solids (they are a dream to work with!) and my coral is their dark coral. I love the richness of this color. I then finished it off with hand quilting in DMC perle cotton no 8 coral.

This is an upcoming pattern that I hope to release before the end of August called Broken Chain. It is inspired by a traditional Irish Chain, but made in a more modern way. I love adding hand quilting to traditionally inspired quilts as a nod to their heritage.

Where do you stand on this year’s Pantone COTY? Do you love it or hate it?

Back in February when Moda announced their Bella Solids Challenge, I immediately knew I wanted to participate. I had a rough idea come to me, which I sketched out, then got to work. The colors they chose were a real challenge…. more so than coming up with an original idea. They are SO bright and not my normal style (there’s no pink or aqua and definitely orange, yellow, red, purple, and lime green).

The parameters for the competition were to create a modern, 72″ x 90″ finished quilt, using all 12 colors in an original design. I have always loved the Dutchman’s Puzzle traditional quilt block. I love it even more because my husband’s family has a huge Dutch heritage on both sides. I wanted to do a spin on the Dutchman’s Puzzle block and make a minimal quilt. Nothing feels more Modern to me than a minimalistic quilt. It takes a huge amount of restraint to go minimal. It is so much easier to overdo things than to hold back.

In this quilt, which I named Dutchman’s Dilemma, there are several iterations of the Dutchman’s puzzle block with some elements omitted. I am so proud of this quilt, even though it did not win. I had Marion McClellan quilt this in a “graffiti” style to help add movement and fill in the blank space that I intentionally left knowing Marion would fill it in with amazing motifs. She blew me away. Some have asked if I’ll choose to enter a competition of this kind again. At this point, I am not sure. It was a process that caused me to grow, but also was really hard to get the box of shame back in the mail. For now, I’m glad I participated and hope to make this quilt again out of fabrics of my choosing and maybe release a pattern for it in the future.