LQS on Kauai

Local quilt shop....

no, not really local to me.  Not this week, anyway. 

*sigh*

If only I did live in this little round island of tropical paradise.  I was really getting into the batiks.  The swirly purples and greens and aquas, tonal prints with dolphins almost hidden in pools of turquoise.  The lovely Hawaiian ladies showcased their beautiful hand appliqued quilts.  To be recognized as a traditional Hawaiian Quilt, these guidelines are used: 

1) the design is primarily appliqué work
2)the design is a circular repetition of 4 or 8
3) the design uses one or two fabrics (there are exceptions)

Although I hear there are some break out modern Hawaiian Quilters blending some new ideas with the wonderful island traditions.  That's me and my S-I-L with one of the quilters (below).  Looks like we all learned to manage our island hair with the same pony tail style, huh?  My hair would have taken up considerable airspace in that room had it been unleashed.   And in my defense, we were about to go zip lining in a tropical jungle...after I got my fabric fix.

I'm such a tourist.

 This was such a charming store,  loaded with the batiks, japanese novelty prints, and a small selection of exquisite kimono silk fabric from Japan, as well as some cotton kimonos and custom made Hawaiian shirts.  It's been in business for some thirty plus years and I read countless positive reviews from TripAdvisor submitted by tourists awestruck at the local island flavor's offerings...tourists who admitted they did not sew or quilt or plan to do either.

It is a must see if you go to Kauai.  

Deadlines...

Let me brush the cobwebs away and get myself acquainted with this blog again.  I disappeared for a while there, didn't I?    Nothing major keeping me away.  Kids' rehearsals and concerts and "graduations" (myself baking 20 pizzas for that one), family gatherings for a birthday...Life.  Good things.

But I was sewing as well.  I've had my fat geese project going since I first spied Katy's in Fat Quarterly.  I knew I wanted to use MeadowSweet with the reds and browns and pastel pinks, celery greens.  I made this for my mother.  She has geese.  And that other broderie perse thing?  It's never going to be finished.

There's no beginning-middle-end to embellishing is there?  I'll work on it some more when the weather is cold.  I promise.

I am thrilled with this quilt.  I want one for myself.  Enthralled with the whole idea of half square triangles.  I free motion quilted some little flowers in there as well.  Don't see a close up of it?  Well, I'm still a beginner, so let's just call it ambitious and leave it at that.  I self-imposed a deadline of this morning, 7 a.m. to finish this one.  That's the time my nephew leaves for work.  And since he's going to see Nanaw this weekend, I thought I'd save on postage.

My daughter wanted a quilt for pajama day at school. (top) She wanted it to match her pajamas (an earlier effort), so I pulled out the Mendocino stash and made her a quick little blanket.  In a day. Because that's how much notice I got. 

And finally, my last deadline is June 8th for this little guy here.I'm officially early!  La la la.

This goes to the local Project Linus Charity.  They pass blankets out at local  hospitals on children's wards.  The theme for this session was "puzzles" so I looked up some  puzzle quilts on flickr and drew it up on graph paper.

That was fun.  I didn't work out all the seam allowances in the beginning, because there was a line of steam coming out of my ears just from manipulating the pattern to be symetrical.  So I worked that out later. 

la la la.

Just ticking things off the list this week.

It's Friday, and I think I'm done!

Here's to a lazy weekend!