Hawaiian Quilt Project
This is a project I came up with over the summer. One of my YouTubers had a charm pack quilt in one of her videos and I thought, “hey, that looks like an easy way to do a quilt!” So I hatched a plan to purchase some Hawaiian fabric charm packs on the trip we took to Kauai in July. They have several great quilt stores there so I figured it would be a nice keepsake of our trip. Plus, our whole bedroom is Hawaiian-themed so would fit in great with my existing décor.
I was very excited about finding all the fabrics and incorporating them in as souvenirs, but I didn’t like any of the fabrics in the charm packs. I really liked all the florals in the fat quarter bundles. So in one moment I made the project way more difficult for myself. Because with the charm packs, I wouldn’t have had to cut anything or measure anything - just sew the 5 inch squares together. This way, I would have to cut all the fat quarters into 5 inch squares. I also didn’t anticipate that I would need to plot everything out in a design program to make sure the patterns were equally distributed.
On top of all that, I was my usual math idiot and did the math wrong! That meant that I had purchased just enough fat quarters if I used all of them plus the other fabrics I had purchased to make bags out of. So I’m very glad I took the time to plot everything out. I did that using InDesign and making all the little squares. Then I took photos of all the fabrics and numbered them. Then I plotted them out in the squares and moved fabrics around if they were too close to like colors or patterns, or if the repeats stood out too much.
Then the fun was trying to figure out how I was going to keep track of all the pieces after cutting them out. I decided to keep those same file names (last 4 digits) and clip them together with that number as a label. Then I laid all the piles out on the bed (the only surface in my house large enough to fit everything) and laid out each row of the quilt in order (had to split them into half-rows). I then sewed those squares together in their half-rows and hung them on a hanger with a label (row 1A, 1B, etc.). That all went very well and it was pretty much a no-brainer assembly line after that.
Once I had all the rows sewn together, I then sewed those rows together in groups of 4 (to keep the size from getting too crazy). I had ironed all the seams opposite so was able to next all those together as I went, except for the few rows I did in the wrong order. Once that was done I had a complete quilt front! I was very proud of myself and it is busy but not overly crazy looking.
Next it was time to figure out the backing fabric. I decided to order a very pretty blue turtle pattern and had that mailed to me. I had originally plotted out how to cut the fabric to achieve the right size, but math got me again! I forgot to include the seam allowances. I also hadn’t researched any long-arm quilters before this so didn’t realize that their machines need to have a certain amount of overage to be loaded into the machine. The quilter I ultimately picked requires a 5-inch overlap and I think I wound up with only 4 so I’ll need to sew some scrap pieces around the entire edge. After finding a long-arm quilter and filling out her online form, I realized that I needed to have an extra 5 inches on ALL sides of the quilt! So I’m just going to pay to have her add some waste fabric to get the backing up to the right size.
UPDATE: I have now mailed off the quilt to the long-arm quilter and awaiting more information/conversation on next steps. I will share final photos of the quilt when I get it back. Are you following me on Instagram?? That’s the best place to get updates: @lemontreecorner.
The Details:
Used various Hawaiian fat quarters and fabrics from Kapa’a Stitchery on the Island of Kauai
Quilt Size: California King
I also have a YouTube channel where I have several videos showing my process for putting this together. Here is the first one: https://youtu.be/nwvZEzu_QA0
