Finish!! Hawaiian Etude

It is so nice to have this finish report! 

"Hawaiian Etude"
17x17 inches, 100% cotton fabrics and batting

"Hawaiian Etude" has been on my plate for a long time. A couple of years ago, a high school classmate found me on Facebook and we developed a mutual admiration for each other's handiworks. She is an amazing knitter and now an amazing photographer as well. One day I got this fun package in the mail. While on vacation with her family in Hawaii, she'd seen the beautiful and unique quilts they make. Knowing I'm a passionate quilter and love history, she had a book sent to me to share the experience. It's fun, showing both historic quilts of Queen Lili`uokalani's imprisonment period (she made some incredible quilts) as well as the typical style that is still made today.  

That style is very identifiable - it's typically done in two fabrics, often quite bright, and batiks are favorites. It's very geometric, almost like cutting out a gigantic 8-based snowflake, and features elements that relate to Hawaii and hospitality, such as Bread Fruit, Birds of Paradise, dolphins, palms, waves, turtles. . . You get the picture. They are hand appliqued and hand quilted in a distinctive echoing tradition. 

Well, after Kathy sent me the book, I really got the bug to try my hand at this genre of quilting. First I had to gain some hand-applique skills. That took a good while since I'm working on a masters in history and only get time for stitching most evenings for a half-hour or so. 

When I felt ready to tackle my Hawaiian foray, I found a mini pattern online, some batik fabric that made me think of Hawaii, and went to work. I used the back-basting needle-turn method rather than the typical cut-the-whole-thing-out-first method, and was very happy that I did it that way. 

The quilting took me F O R E V E R. I'd never done hand quilting before, so I was (and still am) quite slow at it. Plus, every time I had a binding to stitch down, or label or sleeve to attach, those got priority for my stitching time. After I finished the interior, I was browsing Hawaiian artists again and  realized I could have done something different in the flowers if I'd wanted. But I did really enjoy working this piece. I almost couldn't mail it off to Kathy, because I really love how you can see my skill progression in it. Nothing was marked. I just did the traditional Hawaiian echoing, spacing mine roughly the width of a wooden pencil. That seemed proportionate for this mini's size. On the larger quilts, the echoing is typically 1/2" to 3/4" apart.

I started the quilting in the outer border of the print where my beginner stitch size wouldn't be so noticeable (on the front, anyway). Then I quilted the applique, leaving the creamy background for the last. My stitches went from a 5-count to a 9-count per inch. I just adore how you can see that so clearly on the back. If Kathy weren't a knitter who could appreciate that fun tell so much, I couldn't have let it go. But I like knowing she could look closely with the same eye for detail and smile at the progression.

One more thing about this to share - I did not use a hoop or anything to support it while I quilted. I pin-basted it quite densely, and just held it however was most comfortable as I worked. I'd seen a couple ladies in my Florida guild quilting Hawaiian and Somoaon sofa-quilts with no hoops, so I figured I'd follow their leads. When I got finished and triumphantly laid it out, I panicked!!!  It was the waviest, bubbliest thing I'd ever seen, with very pronounced crease marks showing how I'd kept it folded in quarters each time I'd put it away.  I was so distraught, I forgot to snap a shot. It was about twice as bobble-ly as this one:

But you know what? A very easy blocking job solved every problem! I just put out a couple styrofoam sheets, spritzed each side fairly well, and then patted it down flat. (The batting is 100% cotton.) I didn't pin it, because when I checked the squareness it was already there. I flipped it over once to let both sides dry well perfectly flat.  Problem solved, quilt lying beautifully!

I attached the binding completely by hand. Never done that before! After all that hard hand work, from the applique to the intense echo quilting, I couldn't let a machine touch it. I'm glad I did it this way. 

A hanging sleeve and a label attached, and all is Happy!  The Hawaiian quote is one that conveys a traditional Hawaiian idea of giving freely without expecting returns. 

I love this piece. It was particularly difficult to part with, but I am happy knowing its owner can fully appreciate it and that it can bring fun memories back to her of their family's time together in Hawaii. Some day I'll make a Hawaiian quilt for myself.  :D

~*~*~*~*~

Linking up at

Applique Thursday

TGIFF

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

A Week of Finishes

First-Friday Finishes

Link-a-Finish Friday

WIPs - Sooooo Close to Two Finishes in My Sewing Areas, and Baby Start-up

Making bits and pieces of progress around my conference presentation prep - enough for me to smile about, even though it takes all week to do what many of you can whip out in a half day.  :D

I got this super cool pin cushion from Elizabeth's giveaway at Pieceful Life. 

My husband is happy, I'm sure, that pins are no longer getting plopped onto the side table to occasionally fall on the carpet (and sofa. . . )!  In Florida, my hand-stitching was done on an old cloth sofa that I shamelessly used the arm for poking pins into. These sofas are also quite old and worn (came with the house - we upsized and have no funds for a while to replace them), but they're leather, so I had to act normal with the pins.  ;D

And that's where I sit each evening, stitching, as we watch our dinner-time TV show. Love that lamp. My great-uncle Rudy made that himself, and it looks great in this Colorado home with wood trim.

This station right now is processing my Amaretto Cottage! (Isn't Margaret's quilting LUSCIOUS??) Hmm, and I guess nobody could get this monster handstitched in just a half day and do a proper job. So I feel a bit better. 

My Hawaiian Etude is also SOOO CLOSE! It gets secondary priority at this station - being bumped every time there's a binding/label/hanging sleeve to work on. But the king quilt is just a little large for taking to appointments and wait-times when picking up Marissa at school, so the Hawaiian piece is still making progress. This is the first time I've attached a binding 100% by hand, and I'm almost finished putting it on the front.

My other stations in the "basement" got a good workout this past week to get Amaretto Cottage to the hand-stitching station.

The house is on a slope, so really there's only one small room around on the back side that's a true basement area. I love this sewing nook!!  I fight SADD, so that window bank is awesome when I'm sitting at my FMQ machine in the white desk (it's a Viking Sapphire). You see 1/3 of the window bank.

Having both desks there is extremely helpful when I'm quilting - especially if the back is corduroy or minky. The golden one is an old computer desk that had a hutch. Well, we haven't had a non-laptop for years, and the hutch was just overbearing. So when we moved here and I verified that the desk matched my sewing table's height, I placed them together. I'd intended to buy a white folding table to put behind my sewing table, but Scott came to the rescue by cutting down the supports of the hutch to make it match up. Perfect!

This side is my piecing station, which actually had nothing at all at it last week (a rare occurance, but I really wanted Amaretto Cottage to get full attention).

While we're here - a view of the rest of my sewing area. The ironing board is purposefully several steps from the machines. Sitting for long periods is really bad for anybody, and especially bad for us folks with Lupus and poor circulation. So I make myself have to get up and walk a bit each time pressing is needed. That door next to the iron? The storage room! And it's all mine! It's got fabulous shelves built in aisles, and not much of it is non-fabric related. Heavenly. 

Behind me is the pool table and some more of the basement. Yeah - We're not finished unpacking. I'd wanted to keep all boxes and mess in the garage, but Florida Girl soon found that the space is critical for vehicle storage in Colorado winters! One day this will all look pretty.

Back to sewing concerns. For Amaretto Cottage's 112" squareness, I had to dismantle my piecing station.

See why?! And that's all bunched up and tripled-over on itself!

There's no way I could have worked with all that getting piled behind the machine without the added space of the hutch extension. 

 

Meet Lionel Stitchy.  Love this guy. He's a little squished there, but the college girls gave him to me for my birthday, specifically to keep me company while I sewed. (Thus his name. Am I dating myself?  heh!)

So - now that Amaretto Cottage is upstairs for handwork, my machines are both back where they belong, and I'm getting ready for the next FMQ. Practicing a motif Wendy Sheppard shared at Ivory Spring. That's plexiglass with duct tape around it. Perfect for dry-erase practice and quilt design fussing. You just have to make sure not to get that ink on the quilts. Thus the tape. And when I applied the tape, I made sure the front is wider than the back so that I always put the same side against the fabric. Just to doubly ensure that no faint smudges get on the quilts.

The piecing station will soon get some attention after its break. These 10" squares are my first foray with the the 8-in-1 method for HSTs. Need a baby quilt for my youngest sister's first-born, due next month. Going to make the barn raising layout and practice some FMQ in the white diamond bands.

Found this fun "Owl and the Pussycat" fabric in my stash, along with some other blues to play with it. And man, that bolt of Kona Snow I got 18 months ago is still saving me with this stash-only restriction! I've got a nice hardcover copy of the book on order - it even matches the coloring/theme of this fabric - very cool! I hope to also make a book tote featuring this fabric to go with the quilt and book.

Thanks for letting me sneak in some journaling. I really love this new home. 

~*~*~*~*~

Linking up at

Kate's "Share Your Space"

Lee's WIP

Applique Thursday

Esther's WOW

WIP - 19 Dec '12 - Time for a switch :)

I'm super antsy for the last stitches to be in on this label, because then I get to strike a UFO off the list and make a blessed project switch -FINALLY- at one of my stations.  :D  Yes!

Coming to the stitching station tonight:

Pulling UFO Hawaiian Etude back into active work. 

This is my first hand-quilting piece. 

I've made progress already in shortening my stitches. 

You can see that here in the difference between the stitches on the fuchsia batik and the the cream stitches outlining the inner motif. I've gone from 5/inch to 8/inch. (We do count only the top stitches, right?)

Koko zeroed in on this 15" mini pretty fast when I trespassed on his sun patch to get some shots.

At the FMQ station:

Finished the grass! 

Now to do the loopy "flight lines" around the flower heads, then I can do the quilting for the bias print and that's all. On track for having this UFO quilted by New Year's.  That is happiness.


At the piecing station:

Fences all made!!!!!  

Just need to attach the top and bottom and put the last border on this UFO. I'm just not certain whether I'll leave it as is, or if I want to applique something in the plain green corners you see on the pattern pic. 

I think their emptiness bothers me, and since I've made other tweaks, shouldn't I do something here, too? I'm thinking of appliqueing this motif in those squares with some of my medium and light-tone pink scraps from the blocks.

Thank you to Lee and this week's host for facilitating this motivational link-up!

WIP - Changing Gears

I'm happy, because this week I get some new colors to work with!  It's nice that I got both Dragonflies fully assembled, and their backs made, but I normally can't stand working with the same colors for that many weeks in a row. Apartment limbo forces changes on my modus operandi, though.

Oh! I also finished the Hawaiian aplique stage of that mini quilt. Unfortunately, all my batting is too far back in storage, and I'll have to wait until we're in the house to move this one forward.

Here is the last UFO project that escaped Deep Storage: "Quiet Rebellion on the Pond."  I named it thus because when I was participating in my old guild's December 2010 block exchange, the layout I liked best broke the rules of how we were supposed to use the required colors. So I made a double set of blocks - one to turn in (that followed the rules) and one the way I liked them. Too bad my phone is taking such pitiful shots today. The colors are much nicer in real life.

Got its box opened and hung the center up.

Printed out the game plan (I'd designed this one in my EQ).

Cut the remaining "yardage" borders.

Went ahead and cut the binding while that fabric was out - LOVE how well it used up the piece, with only these triangles to put in the scrap bin!

Cut lots of squares for the flying geese border - 108 of those white suckers! (I'll use the 4-at-once method.)

And remembered to save some good selvage cuts for my future plans:

Today I will tackle the 108 flying geese that I need for that border!

Go ahead and check out what the others are up to at WIP Wednesday - there's some great eye candy and inspiration out there!

WIP peeks

TV-time hand stitching

Jane rows E-F-G

#2 - 1/4" sashing in progress

Heather's working on a pirate ship

And Scott's working on a biplane