Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Hawaiian Applique

This week I've been reading a book by Jennifer Chiaverini titled The Aloha Quilt.


One of the characters in the book takes a trip to Hawaii to help a friend start a Hawaiian quilt camp. She decides she wants to learn to make a Hawaiian quilt as a momento of her stay in Maui. After reading in the book about the quilts and their meanings, and how they are made, I started thinking about trying one of my own. I've done applique before but not with very successful results and it wasn't that enjoyable. I've never been able to figure out which technique I wanted to try to make it easier to do. All those little pieces to be placed and appliqued and so on. So, I did a little research and found a web site that has a few free patterns and some basic instructions for how to make a Hawaiian applique quilt. The web site is here. You can choose one of the free patterns that are on this page, then if you click on "Quilting Instructions" it will tell you exactly how to cut out your block, quilt it, etc. This is the best web site I've found with all this information in one place. Then, for eye candy, I started doing image searches in Google for Hawaiian quilts and found these:






This was enough to get me started, so I printed off one of the free patterns from the web site and decided to start small with a pillow size block to get hang of this applique thing. It wasn't too bad and I know that with practice I will get better. When I finish this pillow I want to make another one, but a little larger, maybe a small wall hanging size.

Here is my block. I finished appliquing it last night. I haven't quilted it yet, but that's the next step. I'll post progress pictures later on.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Yesterday

It's really unusual I know for me to post twice in one day, let alone once a day, but I was reading my blogs and I came across this beautiful video that my piano teacher made of her singing "Yesterday" by the Beatles. She's playing the piano and her daughter, who is an awesome photographer, took the pictures that go with the video.

Spring Time

Yesterday at work some of our staff went to a luncheon. Corsages were given to the ladies and they had a few left, so one of my coworkers brought them back and gave them to those of us who stayed behind to hold down the fort. I think they are beautiful.


This morning I was looking out my kitchen window and saw all these beautiful wisterias.




At last, but not least, are my azaleas that are blooming right now.