Fiesta

 

I hadn't intended to enter the Johnson's Sewing Centre quilt challenge this year. I pretty well always have more than enough projects of my own to complete, without joining QALs, BOMs or quilt challenges. But I intended to make a signature quilt by making HST units from a charm pack of print and a charm pack of white. And this year, the challenge fabric was a charm pack of bright, cheerful tonal fabrics. Perfect, so I decided to "kill 2 birds with one stone" and bought the challenge charm pack. 

The challenge is that you have to use some of each fabric on the front of the quilt and you can add whatever other fabrics that you want and the quilt can be whatever size you want. Some entrants even made bags and clothing. 

I had a pretty good idea what I was going to do with the centre of my quilt. I just had to determine what to do with the rest of it. I already had the solid white charm pack in my stash, and ordered 8 different coordinating colours of Kona from Mad About Patchwork. The ideas for what to do just sort of progressed as the quilt did. It was already March when I started my project and entries were due by March 31, so I didn't have time for really elaborate stuff. But if I wanted to win, it needed to have the "wow factor." And I think it does. How can you miss with those colours?

I wasn't sure what I was going to call this quilt. Initially, I was thinking "Whirlwind" after the centre motif, but as the quilt grew, I felt it was taking on a Latin American "flavour" and so ended up with Fiesta. To coordinate with this, I quilted it with the pantograph "Sol" by Patricia Ritter for Urban Elementz. Sorry, I didn't snap a close up of the quilting. 

The only unfortunate thing is I think I like it too much to give it away. So, I have started on a different signature quilt. 
If you want to view all of the entries in this quilt challenge, you can view them on Johnson's Sewing Centre's Facebook page. There are some amazing entries this year, pretty stiff competition. And if you want to vote for mine, it's number 27.