2015 Pantone Challenge - Marsala - what even is that?

When Pantone announced that their colour for 2015 was Marsala, I was very surprised.  I looked at pictures of Marsala, but I couldn't even really describe the colour - was it brown? dark red? burgundy? what was it?




















I now know that part of the problem was that I didn't know Marsala was a type of wine! I'd never heard of it. We make a lot of wine in New Zealand, but we can't make Marsala because it's a name that can only used for wine that comes from near the village Marsala, in Italy. I guess our wineshops and supermarkets don't feel the need to import Marsala when we have other alternatives grown locally.  Once I realised that Marsala was a type of wine (and not a type of curry known as Masala), the challenge became slightly easier.

Adrienne from On The Windy Side had said that the judges would be quite lenient on the colours used in the challenge, so I picked out a few of the deep red (wine coloured) fabrics that I had on hand. I'd seen some colour charts on another site where they combined lime green with Marsala, and I that idea appealed to me. So I put some lime green in with my Marsala fabrics, and started to play around with them.

I decided to make a cushion out of my Marsala fabrics.  I added some hand stitching to the giant Gerbers on the beautiful Jane Sassaman fabric in the centre panel, and outlined the green leaves with Perle 8 too. I then did some rows of machine quilting across the cushion top.  The back is just a piece of brown fabric I had in my stash, but there is a zip so it can be washed if necessary.

So now I have a nice Marsla cushion which can be used indoors or out.

I loved the Pantone colour of the year in 2014 - Radiant Orchid, and really enjoyed making a lap quilt for that challenge. You can read about that quilt here. I wonder what colour they will come up with next year!

Happy Easter

I hope you're all enjoying an Easter break. We're having a lovely time with my mum and dad here for five days.

Yesterday we took a trip up the Kapiti Coast and went to Te Horo. It's a very stony beach with lots of driftwood, but funnily enough just 10 kms down the road there's another beach with beautiful white sand. I think the other beach is protected by Kapiti Island so there's less debris washed ashore.

me and mum

We also went to Ruth Pretty's Cooking School for coffee and cake. I love Ruth's Christmas cake, and fortunately they were still selling it by the slice in their garden cafe shop. We sat in the little green house for morning tea.

see the tea cosy they use!

Of course there's been plenty of sewing going on too.

What you see above turned into a one hour basket - yes, I followed the trend and got mum to whip one up based on the pattern by Kelby Sews. I bought some Soft and Stable on Wednesday so we used some of that for the stiffening.

Here's what it looks like now:

Mum bought me down some more of the beautiful California wool because I'm going to make a second ripple blanket. The second one will be slightly smaller than the first, and I will use it in the lounge on winter nights. We do have a heater, but I feel the cold more than the rest of the family. The second blanket will be more scrappy, incorporating all the remains from the first blanket, plus a few new wild colours called Circus and Macaw which you can see above.

Here's our progress to date and it's only Easter Sunday morning. Mum and Dad don't leave until Wednesday afternoon so there's plenty more sewing time yet.

In fact I can hear my machine whirring now because mum is making a second one hour basket for my niece, her granddaughter. I'll be sure to post a photo once it's finished.

Marsala - will I, or won't I?

The Pantone colour of the year for 2015 is Marsala. Mmmm, my teenagers might say "what a fail", and I originally thought that too.  However, I was going through a box in my stash and I found these 6" strips of Kaffe which came in a bundle (I would never have chosen them myself).

Ha, I thought, I guess I could make something very small out of these and enter it into the competition Adrienne is running on her blog - On the Windy Side. The mini category includes cushions and even mug rugs.

As an aside, Adrienne's blog is called that because she lives in Wellington too. Yesterday it was so windy that 3 shipping containers blew off the wharf and into the harbour! Now that doesn't happen everywhere does it.

I thought that if I was going to work with these fabrics I would have to brighten them up somehow, so I sat them next to green on my ironing board for a few hours.

Then I found this useful website .  After looking at their pictures I decided that this wasn't really Marsala afterall because they described Marsala as similar to red wine.

So I put those fabrics away and went digging again.  These fabrics look much more like red wine to me, and I'll be much more happy using them than the browns. Fortunately the same greens still work well with them.  I love that Jane Sassaman print on the left.  It was in my welcome bag when I joined the guild last year.

I'm now thinking more of a cushion that a mug rug, or maybe even both. Or two cushions so one doesn't look out of place. I definitely don't want to do a quilt, and I won't have time either. Entries open on 17 April.  I know that sounds ages away, but I've got lots of other things to finish.