Purple Zone

There's nothing like an exhibition to make you hurry up and finish a quilt. 

This recent finish is a combination of two Jen Kingwell designs. 

Back in 2019 I started Jen's Marshal Mystery Quilt published through QuiltMania.  I was very proud of my central motif when I finally got it to sit flat, but as time went on and more and more of the quilt got released, I didn't feel inspired to finish it according to the pattern.  

But I've always hung onto this centre piece and I knew I'd find a way to use it one day.  

Last year another Australian quilt designer, Chris Jurd came and spoke to our guild and taught some classes.  I loved Chris' show and tell and the stories behind many of of quilts.  I decided that my vision was too small and I needed to think BIG. 

So I dug out the centre of my Marshal Mystery Quilt and decided to applique it onto a back ground.  And because I'd been seeing a lot of lovely Daylesford quilts from Jen Kingwell's Quilt Recipe book, I decided to add some borders using Jen's method and mixing them up with a few blocks.

It was so liberating to just make a few blocks for the borders rather than thinking that I needed to carry the same design right around the quilt.  To top it all off I used Kaffe Fasset's Shiraz in Grey from my stash on the final border.  

Finally, because the hand quilting pile was growing bigger and bigger, and I wasn't even sure hand quilting would show up on this quilt, I took it to Sue B at Busy Bee Quilt Shop in Wellington and she worked her magic on it.  Thank you Sue!

As for the name? I'm continuing my theme of naming quilts after songs, and Purple Zone by The Pet Shop Boys and Soft Cell gets a good thrashing in my car. It seemed an appropriate name for this guilt given how much purple is in it.    

I hadn't even seen the video until I went searching for this YouTube link, and it is a bit weird, but I love the chord progressions in this song so I'm sticking with it for the name of this quilt.  

Finished size 68" x 68"

PS - you may remember that I used some of the blocks I made for the Marshal Mystery Quilt in "We Built this City" which you can read about here. 

And, I still have 4 of these little hand pieced circle blocks from the Marshal Mystery Quilts that I may well use in the future. They were meant to be semi circles but I joined mine up to make circles. 

Watch this space.