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