January Color Palette Challenge

Last year I followed a blog that assigned a "monochrome quilt" challenge each month, a single color with a background color.  This year a real colorist, Vicki Welsh of Field Trips in Fiber will create a color palette for quilters (or painters, knitters, crafters!) each month.

Her January inspiration, some antique English tiles:

Vicki writes, "This is a photo that I took in the V&A Museum in September. These are tiles from an English ship made in 1882 by Architectural Pottery Company, Poole, UK."

Aren't they lovely?  My own interpretation of this color palette is inspired by a favorite Vera Bradley handbag:

I was surprised how close the colors on my bag were to the antique tiles.

I used my colors for the February Fat Quarter Fun group at Ruth's Stitchery.  Our pattern this month is by Cheryl Witt of sew-be-it in Billings, Montana.

"On the Slant" is a really fun design and it was interesting to see what colors my classmates chose.  Here is my finished top:

And a closeup.  The solids are all Kona cottons ranging from lightest blue to navy.  The border is "Japanese Chrysanthemum" by Philip Jacobs for Rowan, Westminster Fibers.

I'm amazed how well the border fabric goes with the solids. Usually I would choose the print first, then select other fabrics to go with it.  This time the border came after the top was mostly pieced.  The only thing I would do differently (always second-guessing) is to put the light yellow in the very center, so there would be less of it.

By the way, this is quilt top #10 for 2012!