Mele Kalikimaka in July

As a Christmas present last year my dad requested a quilt to hang in his house.  He wanted a quilt to remember Hawaii.  I knew I would not have it finished anywhere near Christmas, but I really had no idea that it would take until July to complete it and ship it off.  I almost always have a backlog of quilts (gifts promised for weddings or birthdays) or other time sensitive projects (cherries must be preserved during cherry season.)  So when the Hawaii quilt made it to the top of my queue I decided to push it back a bit more because we were planning to visit Hawaii soon and I figured it would be a good time to get some inspiration and sketch some designs.

Once we got back I had tons of sketches to sort through and design ideas to finalize before work could finally begin. I had tons of memories I wanted to capture. Too many. Dad has fairly minimalist taste, so I new I needed to start somewhere simple.

I bought the fabric for the project,

and started making some waves.

This was my first go at improvisational curves, so things didn't turn out quite as I had planned, but I certainly learned a lot along the way. Once I got the beach and the ocean pieced, it was time to add the sky.

While my ideas of what this quilt might be changed considerably through the design process there was one thing I always knew I wanted to do for this quilt: quilt the lyrics to my favorite Hawaiian song in the background.

This song always moves me. It always reminds me of Hawaii. It was non-negotiable.

I actually had to complete a couple of practice projects earlier in the year to make sure my free motion quilting skills were going to be up to snuff for free-hand cursive writing, but I am really pleased with the way the song lyrics came out.

They are my favorite part of the project. The one other element I was always sure I wanted as part of this quilt was the big palm tree "W". We've been going to the same resort on Kauai since I was a kid and we decided early on that the best rooms are the rooms that face this big palm tree "W".

We generally get rooms on that side, so this is almost always the view from our room. These palm trees remind me of sitting out on the balcony or porch and talking as a family, obviously about Mel Brooks movies.

When I got to this point, I still had about 3 ideas of things I wanted to incorporate, but I didn't want to end up with something that was too busy or that took away from the two things I wanted to focus most on: the song and the "W".  So I just stopped.  It wasn't easy seeing as my personal style veers toward more is more.

This is what the finished back of the quilt looks like: awesome whale fabric, batik sleeve for hanging, with backing applied so that none of the words read in reverse. (This is my preferred way of backing quilts that have directional quilting.)

The front has a batik border with yellow binding.

Apologies for the truly unflattering pictures of this rather nice quilt. This thing is a beast, so it's hard to photograph. Nevertheless, mele Kalikimaka, dad!