We are very fortunate to be able to hold it at the local art academy, The Honolulu Academy of Arts.  We hold it for about 10 days each year.

In the past, there has been a featured artist that shows their work in the lobby.  This year, the committee decided to feature our community service projects. 

Na Lima Aloha (The Hands of Love) makes quilts for various groups around the island of Oahu.

The smaller quilts are some of the quilts we donated to the tsunami refugees.

Wounded Warrior quilts – quilts given to the Marine Base Kaneohe for those wounded in service.

Home of the Brave quilts (top).  These quilts are given to family members of deceased service members from Hawaii. 
Operation Kid Comfort (bottom).  These photo quilts are given to children of deployed service members.

That what was on the wall of the lobby.  To the right, was the reception area where you can buy calendars, pins, and fabric postcards).

That is Connie sitting at the reception table with this year’s opportunity quilt behind her.

This is the view as you enter the door of the show.  A stunning view.

Here are some more area views from various viewpoints around the room…

That is my friend Maureen in the picture… I keep telling her she needs a blog, but she won’t listen to me…

So this post is about viewer’s choice, first place.  This quilt was stunning and the photos do not do it justice.

The Pacific Voyages of Captain Cook by Mildred Tahara

Hawaiian Flowers from our Land  by Dawn Peerson

Monstera’s Wild by Jeanie Salmon

My Blue Hawaii by Wendy Pulsifer

Travelling Flower Garden by Patricia Lei Murray

Contours by Margaret Teruya

Ku’u Wilde Pikake by Marilyn Smith

Omigosh by JoAnne McPherson

Thread Art Tapestry by Dawn Peerson

Fiesta Day by Monika Scola

Rainbows from my Lanai by Sue Larson

Scrap Happy by Bonnie Lum

Magnificent Ka’a’awa by Linda Chang

Hawaiian Monstera by Pat Gorelangton

Christmas Poinsettia by Emily Roney

Elegance by Connie Tschillard

Generations by Charlotte Szmarmes

Dragonfly by Barbara Vasold

Stacked to the Rafters by Joan Santoro

In Pursuit of Liberty, Nothing Comes Easy  by Mary Ann Jones

My Manta  by Ellen Owens

(left) Momma’s Rose Garden by Donna Eng
(right) Grandmother’s Flower Basket by Donna Kanealii

Sky Lights by Dorothy Petras

—

For mother’s day, my children told me to stay in bed, to not get up.  I pretty much assumed they wanted to make me breakfast in bed.  All week long I was getting questions like “so when you make bagels in the toaster, you push the bagel button, right?” and “do you like ketchup with your hash browns” and “how do you like your eggs?”.  I was a little scared because my son (12) is just beginning to cook and while that is fine, my husband is on deployment right now, so no adult supervision downstairs while he cooked.

They came upstairs with this:

A bagel with cream cheese, and scrambled eggs.  Yes, no hash browns, because I told them I couldn’t have them.   The eggs were a little undercooked, but I really wasn’t that hungry that early so that was fine.  It was a great attempt for his first time making scrambled eggs! I am proud of my kiddos!

Every year, with my guild’s annual quilt show, they have a challenge.  The rules vary each year.

This year – the rules were:

1. Must have a 6” focus square that is appliqued and embellished.
2. Must have 3 separate and distinct borders.
3. The quilt can be any shape, but must be no larger than 56” in perimeter.

Last night, each entry was hung out and the guild members were allowed to vote on their favorite three quilts.  They will then calculate the votes and at the opening reception of the quilt show, the top three will have ribbons. The makers were anonymous until after all the votes were collected.

Here is my entry:

I hand-appliqued the flowers and hand quilted the quilt.  The half-square triangle border is 1/2”.  My fingers hurt for days!!

Here are the other entries:

This one was a real working clock!

This one was my friend JoAnne’s

“The Quilter’s Brain”

Joan M’s

Elaine’s

Sally’s

Donna E’s

This one is Margaret’s.  She has a quilt hanging in Paducah right now.  This in remembrance of last year’s tsunami in Japan.

My friend Maureen’s.  The challenge for her was to only make one quilt… she didn’t make it; this was her second one.

Carol’s.  Honu (turtles) are on a lot of things in Hawaii.

My friend Rowena’s

Jean’s.  The birds were made of tons of tiny beads.  You can see a better photo at Jo Anne’s blog (above).

Wendy’s

Sue’s   I love the abstractness of this one!

Yoshi’s

Adele’s

Jo-Ann M’s

Mary Ann J’s

Jennifer’s

And finally Bonnie’s “inflation”.

I used the back-basting method of applique.  It wasn’t really bad.  This was my first attempt at any type of needle-turn applique.

It was a block for my friend Carla’s Aloha Quilt.  My bee has a tradition that when someone moves away that we make a quilt for them.  Each person makes a block.

Carla really loves flowers so each block was to be a flower block.

Here is the whole quilt:

We will miss you Carla! 

I was having a hard time coming up with block patterns, so I decided to go with a few classics:

Friendship Star:

Churn Dash:

and finally Ohio Star… but I didn’t remember that the center block was supposed to be the same as the star points, so they are something different…

and that concludes all 50 of the tsunami quilts that I made.

The obsession is over… or is it?  Yes… it is… for now!

I was running out of ideas for simpler blocks.

Back to Pinterest.  I had pinned a block that I wanted to try.  It looked simple.  I drafted it into EQ to get the size I needed.

I made one block and discovered I could get one block out of 4” of two different fabrics.  So I made a few of these – they were fast, simple, and looked great.

I think that I could have made the rest of them like this… but it felt like “cheating” to me by making multiples of one block.  Don’t ask me what I was thinking.  I only made five total.

__

Another pinterest pinned block I drafted:

I loved doing this one.  The problem with this one was I didn’t have a lot of fabrics that coordinated 5 different prints/solids.  I would have made more of these.

__

Another pinterest pinned block I did was this one:

I drafted it at 7” because I thought it would be easier than figuring out what would fit a 12” block.  I added borders and called it done.  I would have made more of these, but again, I didn’t have the fabrics in three values of a color.

This brings my total up to 43.  7 more to get to 50.  I was seriously running out of ideas for blocks…