A Color Challenge From The Charleston Modern Quilt Guild

The Charleston Modern Quilt Guild issued a challenge that will be due in our January 2026 meeting.

We each drew an envelope with 3 colors in it. We had to make a quilt using ALL those colors at least once in said quilt.

Here are my colors–and it turns out that everyone got the “Smoked Oyster” color.

I didn’t want to make a Christmas quilt with the red and green colors as I knew I would make this quilt a donation gift for this group’s foster children outreach project.

I found the “Smoked Oyster” color to be a real challenge with the clear red and spring green colors. Here’s my solution, which is scrappy, of course. To hide a color that is a problem child, just isolate it somehow. And, knock it back by surrounding it with lots of other colors. The block is a 5-inch kite block cut using a template for that block.

I played with turning some blocks like kites blowing and turning in the end, but I could not make it work. So I settled for putting the blocks on point and figuring out the outer border size. The formulas online for that process are excellent.

I chose a solid bright blue binding as it furter toned down the Smoked Oyster color:

I tried this orientation of this kite block at first, and I really like it. But not with the “Smoked Oyster” color for a whole quilt’s setting background. I turned that block into a hot pad for the counter, and it has two layers of batting and one of Insul-Brite–which makes it very chunky to make. The other hot pad is one I made 3 years ago, and I use it all the time for a hot dish on my kitchen counter.

Here’s the finished quilt:

The backing is “Glade Fans,” designed by Faye Guanipa for Dear Stella, DFG2998. I quilted with a blue the color of the binding (Signature, Soft Cyan) that melted into the backing and looked, actually, green (which was fascinating). (I always quilt with cotton thread.) The panto felt like swirling wind; Denise’s Spirals.

And that’s that!