A few of my online quilting friends have participated in Project Quilting challenges (hosted by Kim Lapacek) over the last several years. I’ve never participated before either from being too busy with other projects or not being confident enough in my quilting/design skills. Now that I’m in my tenth year of quilting (how did that happen!?!), I still struggle with enough time to do all the projects I want to do even though I retired from full-time work in June, but I’ve decided that I need to add more creative play into my life these days. When I saw the Project Quilting 15.2 Sky Color challenge with the rule of taking inspiration from the colors of the sky but excluding or using less than 10 percent of the usual blue, I knew this was right time for me jump right in. I have always loved seeing photos of purple skies. When I did a Google Search on Purple Skies, I found out that the purple skies are most likely due to a phenomenon called airglow which is caused by the interaction of the Sun and ultraviolet radiation. I wasn’t sure how I was going to hang my finished Kite with Purple Sky Mini Quilt, but I found these hanging clips on Amazon which worked wonderfully.

To get my project started, I went to my purple solid fabrics bin and decided to focus on the fabrics that are more red violet than purple. Many of these fabrics aren’t labeled, but I believe I pulled Kona fabrics in the following colors: Berry, Magenta, Geranium, and Dark Violet. Initially I wanted to do a paper-pieced project and designed a basic equilateral triangle divided into four equal pieces. I pieced two of these triangles, trimmed them up, and decided to sew them together forming a kite shape. I then decided to frame the kite center with 1.5″ strip borders and ended with a larger Kona purple border. I quilted the kite in several red violet colors in 25 intersecting lines which reminded me of how kite strings can get tangled.

I then made a scrappy binding referring to the helpful post by Quilting Jetgirl on Tips for Making/Planning a Scrappy Binding.

The angles of my kite mini were a little tricky as far as mitering the corners, but they turned out decently.

I look forward to seeing what the third Project Quilting challenge will be for Season 15.

Linking up to Project Quilting 15.2 Sky Color.