Tropical Warming

Last year, a friend asked me to make a quilt for her daughter and her daughter's sister.

I had already been planning to make one for her daughter, but hadn't really considered a tropical theme.

Her daughter's family has Samoan roots, so my friend asked me if I'd use some fabric she'd ordered in the past.

Opening that box of fabric was like Christmas morning!

The "Postcard Quilt" from HERE, was my original inspiration.

I tried out a few versions of it with Hawaiian fabrics, but knew that Samoan fabrics have much larger prints on them.

This one was smaller than the other one that is similar, a few pictures down.

This has smaller sashing though.

This is the larger lap quilt, that is more similar to the spacing of the real Postcard Quilt.

I made a Pokemon quilt last year for Daniel.  

It was a good block pattern for showcasing the large print on the Pokemon fabric, so I thought I'd try the Hawaiian print.

Meh...I didn't like this one so much.

I had the Samoan quilts hanging over my head for 9 months, because nothing felt right for their design!

I didn't want to compromise the integrity of the gorgeous, huge prints on the fabrics, there were a LOT of different fabrics to choose from so it was hard to narrow down which ones to actually use, and I just had a hard time focusing on what might work.

Finally, I needed to get the quilts done before my hip revision surgery in August.  

One of the recipients has a September birthday and I didn't think I'd be up to quilting while recovering.

(which I totally could have, considering how beautiful this recovery has been!)

I started folding the fabrics in different size boxes to see how they'd be next to each other.

I bought two light greenish sheets to keep the fabric laid out on, so it'd be easy to roll up and keep protected from children and pets while not being worked on.

The fun really started when I cut the first couple pieces of fabric!

It felt like a puzzle, putting different fabrics near each other, making sure some parts did/did not overlap, and making sure colors were spread pretty evenly.

Pardon the darker pictures.  They were taken in a room without a lot of light, and when it was so smoky outside.

The finished quilts side by side.

The one on the right is upside down...

This was the first time I had a professional long arm quilter do the quilting on a quilt for me!

Oh, I never want to go back to my piddly dink sewing machine quilting or tying.

It was so beautiful, and really made the quilt have a great feel and weight when it was done.

And, it was so nice to hand stitch the binding.  So relaxing.

 This picture is when I was still piecing the fronts together.

Blogger just doesn't like to do the pictures in order from my Chrome book.

The girls have or will have the quilts soon, and I hope they love them for a long time to come!