Upscale Plaid quilt - 2025 Kona Color of the Year

Written by Brittany Lloyd

The 2025 Kona Color of the Year is HERE!

I can't believe it's already time for a new Kona Color of the Year (COTY)! It literally feels like we were talking about the 2024 Kona COTY, am I right?? But this year, I was SO excited to learn that the 2025 COTY is a purple. Jackpot!

If you aren't familiar, Robert Kaufman releases a limited edition Kona Color every year, and it's always fun to see what colors and tones they add to their already impressive library of 365 solids. This is the fourth Color of the Year (COTY) quilt that I've made for Robert Kaufman, and I really enjoy this project every time! Here's a look at the three previous Kona COTY quilts:

Which leads us to the 2025 COTY, Nocturne. If you know me, you know I'm a big purple fan. I'm not sure why, but I remember falling in LOVE with the color my senior year in high school. Then I ended up going to college at Western Carolina University who's school colors are purple and gold. It was meant to be! So when I saw Nocturne, my first thought was that it is SO similar to my alma mater purple! Because of that, we thought it'd be fun to go that route with this color palette, which created something that is so different from anything I've ever made! And I LOVE it!

I was a little hesitant about using the Upscale Plaid quilt pattern to show off this fabric because there are also 9 other colors in the quilt. Normally with a COTY quilt, using minimal colors can help keep the focus on the Color of the Year. But with this, since there are such big sections of the background fabric, I figured that as long as Nocturne is the Background, it'll really set the stage to show off this fabric beautifully!

I always love getting to be a part of Robert Kaufman's feature of their new COTY. But this particular project almost didn't happen because the deadline overlapped with our recovery from Helene. Thankfully, Kara, our Community Manager was able to sew it up and she sent it off to Sara of Stitch Lab Quilting for the quilting and binding. I was so thankful for the group effort with this one...and it feels like an extra special quilt because of it!

This is the Throw size Upscale Plaid, which is 67" square. Here are the fabrics that we used..they're all Kona Solids:

BG - 2-1/3 yd COTY: Nocturne
A1 - 2/3 yd Midnight
A2 - 1/8 yd Plum
A3 - 1/4 yd Rose
B1 - 2/3 yd Orchid
B2 - 1/8 yd Ballerina
B3 - 1/4 yd Caramel
C1 - 7/8 yd Roasted Pecan
C2 - 1/4 yd Cedar
C3 - 1/8 yd Brown

We have kits for this exact quilt in the shop!

For the quilting, Sara used a purple thread to match the Background and she used the Blitz pantograph to add some curves to the quilt.

For the binding, I used Kona Ballerina to incorporate a little more light pink into the quilt. For the backing, I thought it'd be fun to use a print, so I went with Sevenberry Summer by Robert Kaufman. It's so sweet, isn't it??