Will the Real Viva Magenta Please Stand Up? Pantone Quilt Challenge 2023

When I saw the Pantone Color of the Year this year, I knew I would make something with it this year. I mean - I already had three fabrics that qualified as Viva Magenta in my stash. Sarah Ruiz of https://saroy.net/ and Elizabeth Ray of

were hosting a challenge, but I didn't have much of an idea. I decided not to put any pressure on myself - I just didn't feel like it could be forced; if nothing came, that was alright.

Then one day, I was looking at some mid-century modern art, and I got a flash of an idea: A two color quilt with negative space! I did some sketching and yes, I had an idea that I loved. But which color of Viva Magenta should I use? I decided that since I already had 3 in my stash, I would get some of the rest and then decide.

As I looked at all them laid out, I thought "Why not use them all?" It would add interest to the piece. In the sketch I had the magenta and white space, but that wasn't too exciting. So I auditioned black (okay but not quite, a beautiful blue (meh) and finally grabbed my neon stash. When I saw the Acid Lime with the magenta's, that's when I got excited!

So I drew up some templates (wish I'd had my large clammies by Latifah Saafir at the time, could have used them) and put the quilt together at a retreat. I deliberately didn't pay attention to which hue of Viva Magenta I was using - just cut a bunch of pieces and grabbed them randomly and sewed them together. That was in back April. another thing I didn't really fret about was perfection. The half-circles and circles are NOT perfect. don't know why, but i decided that imperfect was good in this piece. For some reason which I cannot really explain, I like this slight wonkiness. I could have tried to correct it and maybe succeeded, but I kind of feel like it adds a kind of hand-painted feeling to the piece...I guess.

I went to Spain for two weeks and when I got back the clock was ticking. I had to quilt the thing, but I didn't want the quilting to be too intrusive - it is a minimalist design. I also wanted to quilt the quilt in a different way than just following the lines of the circles, so I went and looked at some fabric lines with circles. The negative space quilting was inspired by a Guicy Guice fabric called Petri pattern. The magenta space was kind of inspired by Allison Glass fabric that kind of has a compass (maybe that's the name of the fabric...) look to it that was popular about 8 or 9 years ago. I used neon threads (lately neon has been a kind of obsession for me) to quilt the piece, and I'm pretty pleased with the whole thing. It was so much fun to make.