Hawaiian Applique

Once upon a time my son lived in Japan. While riding the train one day he met sweet Kaori who asked if she could practice her English with him (I have always thought that was a great pick up line Kaori). Anyway, as these stories go, first came love, then came marriage, then came the cutest grand baby in the world. I know, I know, perfectly shameless way to get yet another picture of my grandson in the blog and I have jumped to far ahead in my story. Back to what this has to do with Hawaiian Applique. When the family of the groom lives in the United States and the family of the bride lives in Japan where is the perfect place to get married? Hawaii ! The wonderful week of their wedding is still surreal to me but we all came away from Hawaii with a love of Hawaiian quilts. When we came home I made a small Hawaiian quilt for them with turtles (because we swam with the turtles one day in Hawaii) dolphins, pineapples, and flowers from their wedding. The promise was always out there that one day I would do a Hawaiian quilt for their bed. Now here we are 4 years later and ta dah...

Kaori loves the ocean and choose a sea foam green color for the applique, it is a fairy frost so it sparkles. The quilt is 104 X 104 inches. The pattern is called Fish on Coral and it was designed by Elizabeth A Akana (copyright 1972). I started the applique and had a lot of wonderful help from my mother who did all of the outer border and the outer edge of the center design. This is the finished top, now for the quilting. I was going to have the quilt hand quilted, but reality set in, this is going to a young family, I want them to USE IT. I am going to put it on the long arm today and machine quilt it. I still intend to do echo quilting in all of the white area, so this will involve a turn on the frame, I will keep you posted on my progress. Happy Stitching all... Cheri

a quick little post about a Great Big Quilt

I continue to be busy with machine quilting, which is a very good thing, I enjoy it. I just had to post a couple pictures of Linda's beautiful quilt, she picks the most beautiful fabrics. I love that smokey lavender. She did very well with her machine appliqued circles on the center of each block - her first project with blanket stitch applique. The real story of this quilt is the size - 130 inches long by 100 inches wide! I used the ENTIRE width of the backing leaders 134 inches for the back fabric. My machine is actually a mid arm, a Handiquilter Avante, and it was a champ!

I wish I had taken a longer shot of the quilt on the frame but I had one with the quilt on top of my king size bed and as you see it is bunched on the floor at the bottom of the bed - plenty of pillow tuck on this quilt : )

Happy Stitching All...

Cheri

Cool Pantos

I have been busy this week working on quilting Sarah and Judy's quilts. There are such great pantograph designers these days it just makes long arm edge to edge quilting so much fun to do. This falling leaves pattern by Sew-Phie quilts (copyright 2009) was perfect for Sarah's scrappy green quilt. This is just a short section of the pattern, it has a 52 inch repeat and each row you start on a different mark on the bottom of the pattern giving it a very custom look.

Judy's beautiful fabric from her recent trip to Hawaii was just a joy to see. I remember this mom and daughter duo working on both of these quilts at my small groups winter retreat this

past February. Judy picked a great Star variegated thread for this quilt, bright oranges, greens, and yellows, the back of the quilt is as fun as the front. Thank you for letting me quilt your quilts ladies, they are beautiful.

Happy Stitching all...

Cheri

A Happy Finish & Some Works in Progress

I spent days and days ripping out quilting stitches on this quilt in early July but I am happy to say it is now a finished quilt. This was my Mom's first applique attempt, she has pieced and hand quilted for years, but had never tried applique. It is sort of a charm quilt as every circle applique is a different fabric, there are two green fabrics for the leaves and stems. I quilted the quilt on the long arm machine with a feather pantograph,

it was a good choice for the applique and for the future owner of this quilt. For now this quilt is living at my house, I am so glad I ripped out all of those stitches.

I have been working on block 14 of the Civil War Bride quilt, the peahen.

I choose almost all poison greens for this block and I was a little worried it would stick out when put next to the the other blocks, so I pinned it up next to the finished blocks. Getting it up on the wall and taking a picture gives me a little distance to evaluate the mix. I think it is going to be okay and I just love these greens with the turquoise blue of the peahen. So for now I will just keep happily stitching.

I have also been playing around in all the lovely Kaffe Fassett fabrics for the Roseville Album. Mostly I just want to get to know these fabrics and pick out some key fabrics for some of the fun appliques in this quilt. I have been making piles of pinks, reds, blues, greens, darks, oranges, etc. I am still deciding between machine and hand applique on this quilt. Those five finger flowers and trees I would like to just do on machine, the circles I would rather do by hand. Hmmmm

Have a good weekend and happy stitching all...

Cheri