Kona Highlight Plaid Mini Quilt

A few months ago I got an email from the wonderful people at Robert Kaufman asking me if I would like to make a mini quilt highlighting the Kona color of the year, Highlight.  Yes, yes, yes! They sent me a big stack of different Kona colors and gave me freedom to do whatever I wanted as long as the finished quilt was 20" square and as long as it highlighted Highlight.

Here is my finished quilt.  My inspiration came from a box of tissues that had a simple plaid pattern - I wish I had taken a photo of it before it got lost in our move. 

It was so much fun to spend so much focused time on this project.  I made large template pieces to construct the block and then handquilted lines 1/2" apart, leaving the highlight strips unquilted.  I am thinking about turning this into a pattern to make a quilt for my son's bed but I will need to come up with a simpler way to put it together.

My quilt - along with 59 others - was in a Kona Color of the Year booth at Quilt Market this past weekend.  I had no idea what other people had made and it was so fun to see the different directions that people took.