Tag Archives: Kona Hibiscus

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I initially bought this yard and a half of fabric about ten years ago, figuring that it would be fun to quilt as a wholecloth quilt and thinking I would do that on my domestic machine, an early 80's Viking 6690. Fast forward to when I got my new longarm setup, an Innova M20. I had rented time on a longarm prior to purchasing my own machine, but I still seemed to be a little bit intimidated and I was struggling with which quilt top to load onto the machine.

Then I ran across this fabric, reminded of my plan to quilt it as a wholecloth quilt. This seemed like less of a risk, less chance of messing up a pieced top. I loaded it on the machine and got to work.

I'm most excited about using my longarm for hand-guided free motion quilting. I chose not to get a computer for the machine. I loved the variety of designs in this print and enjoyed playing with different motifs for different sections of the design. I especially liked the two different border designs. I loaded the fabric onto my longarm so I could quilt across a whole border in my first pass.

It is not without a few thread problems on the back, but I'm overall very happy with how it came out. I enjoyed trying a variety of quilting motifs. Here you can really see the texture of the quilting on the back (green) and all those asterisk shapes along the edge were on the second border (see the front of the quilt top in the bottom of that image).

I chose Kona Hibiscus solid for the binding. I used the selvage edge of the quilt top to guild my color choice for the binding.

It is machine bound (see my tutorial for how I do it!) and topstitched with Aurifil 50wt Very Dark Eggplant (#1240).

Not the best photo. (I swear it's a rectangle!) My finished quilt is about 40" x 52". It's one of five quilts I'll have on display in the San Mateo County Fair exhibitions hall this month.

Check out my other finish from May. (It's going to the fair too.)

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In June, Chris shared photos of Pueblo pottery as our inspiration for improv piecing our blocks for her. Her husband has the book From This Earth: The Ancient Art of Pueblo Pottery by Stewart Peckham which inspired her prompt. She asked us to make 1-2 blocks that could be square or rectangular and around 12-13" on one side. Our palette was to Kona Natural, Bone, Ivory, Haze, or Dove for the background and Kona Hibiscus, Crimson, Roasted Pecan, or Indigo for the features color, or similar.

These are not colors typically in my stash so I took the opportunity to add to my solids and placed an order. Here's what I got. (I label the selvage of my solids in Sharpie so I know what is what.) When my fabrics arrived I really loved all the light neutrals together. I may circle back to using them all together in some way.

For my first block, I settled on Haze and Hibiscus. There was an image with skinny stripes in a stair step pattern that caught my eye.

These are my initial pieces. My purple skinny strips finish at 1/8" wide. I wanted to join them at a right angle so I cut two sections of my strips at opposite 45 degree angles. The section in the upper right is larger color block sections. This resulted in a y-seam.

I started by piecing my strips on the 45 degree angle seam, figuring I could be more precise with matching up my purple strips if I sewed this seam first.

Next I pieced in the center section and added more background around the right and bottom sides.

Here's my finished block. I think it finished at about 10" x 14".

For my second block, I chose Ivory & Roasted Pecan. I picked a small section of one of the designs that made me think of improv triangles.

Here it is before trimming up. I paired my improv triangles with smooth improv curved piecing. It's slightly larger than my first block.

I hear Chris is working on her quilt and look forward to seeing it come together!