Let the celebration begin, the Hawaiian quilt is complete and on the bed!

Picture, if you will, my awkward self dancing an Irish jig.  Strike that.  An awkward hula.

I am truly and utterly excited to debut my Hawaiian quilt.

So if you are new to my party, each quilt block is made in a different batik fabric. The embroidery designs are by Anita Goodesign, from their Hawaiian Quilt collection.  Each block is comprised of four identical machine embroidered sections.  Each section took about three hours or so to make.  I’m tired thinking about it.

A terrific embroidery design by Urban Threads ( urbanthreads.com ) was the basis for my quilt label.  I added text to document all the important information about my quilt.  Like the fact that it took me forever.

Did I mention that my bed is a king size?  I started the blocks and refused to measure my bed to see how many I needed.  When I had finished 20 blocks, I laid them on the bed to see how close I might actually be from a quilt.  That was when I decided to use plain white borders.  But the borders had to be special, to be quilted so they would match the pizzaz of the quilt itself.

This is when you call in the big guns.  Natalia Bonner, author and quilter extraordinaire, did a great job on this quilt.  I said I like bubbles, and feathers, and lines…oh my!  Check out more of Natalia’s amazing work on her blog Piece N Quilt ( pieceandquilt.com )

One dilemma of a king size quilt is how to wrangle it to sew on the binding.   Let’s just say that it took a long time and some arm strength to get the binding on this puppy.  I draped it across my cutting table AND a sofa, repositioning it after every few feet.

It was a trial by fire for my new machine, a Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.2.  I chose it mainly for the built-in walking foot.  Are you ready, foot?  Start walking!  (Short break while I dance the pony and sing “These boots are made for walkin!”)

I’m elbow deep into another embroidered quilt, this one for Christmas.  Hey, it’s only November 2nd…