Two Birds, One Stone | A finished quilt

Warning this is a picture heavy post!

I was very exited when Adrianne and Anne announced the 2015 Pantone Quilt Challenge using this year's color: Marsala.  A lot of people aren't thrilled with the color but I really like how warm and versatile it is.  Just check your fabric stash, I bet you'll find some as a secondary color is quite a few of your fabrics.

official Marsala Swatch

Luckily for me, the announcement of this year's challenge coincided very nicely with the beginning of a design concept for my local quilt guild's yearly challenge.  And I, being the ever practical and logical person that I am, decided to combine them!

I have been sharing sneak pictures of this quilt since I started working on it but because our local challenge is supposed to be blind voting I couldn't share a picture of the finished quilt...  However, we had our presentation of the challenge quilts on Wednesday and our guild meeting and now I can!

Many thanks to my good friend Jenn and her co-worker Jason for holding up my quilt for me in a few of these pictures!

This quilt uses fabrics from a variety of designers, including Cotton + Steel, Kaffe Fasset, Anna Marie Horner, and many others!  The solid I found closest to the official Marsala swatch was American Made Brand in Brick Red.  Not exact, but close enough for me.  The background is a from Carolyn Friedlander's newest collection, Doe.  It's the Ladder Lines print.  I love how this print gives the whole quilt warmth and is less aggressive than a stark white print would have been.

I quilted on the diagonal on my home machine, a Janome Horizon Memory Craft 8900QCP, using my walking foot and a brandless pink-red thread I picked up last year at Vermont Quilt Festival.  I love the pop of color on the backgrounds and how it blends into the prints.  I also really like the texture it gives the back of the quilt, just enough to be structured but still soft and cuddly.

The background is pieced, half with a nameless print I picked up at a clearance sale last spring and half with this adorable animal faces fabric... blanking on the name of it right now.

I used a fun purple/orange/marsala triangle print... again blanking on the name... and leftover scraps of the American Made Brand brick fabric to bind the quilt.

Despite it's size this quilt, when it's done hanging in our local quilt show, will become a couch quilt for my husband and I.  It measures a hefty 84" x 68"!  My husband gets genuinely upset when he can't find a large enough quilt to cuddle with on the couch so I have been given strict instructions not to make anymore lap quilts!  This ought to fit the bill though.

I'm calling this one: "Two Birds, One Stone"

It uses two different birds in the air blocks, two main color-ways, and will be entered into two different challenge quilt competitions.  You can see my previous progress post on this quilt here: Instagram Progress | Challenge Quilt


Linking up with Caroline at Sew Can She for Show off Saturday.