Kaluna Me Ka Peahi

No, I'm not sure what that means either! but I will try to find out....it is my other Hawaiian quilt on the go. I have the blue and white Molokama in the frame, and this red and white top to applique; it is nice to have more than one project in progress at once.

The patterns come from Poakalani on large sheets of newsprint - I press them onto strips of freezer paper to make them sturdier and less likely to tear...

 It is quite hard work to iron the fabric into eighths and then to pin the pattern onto the fabric. And, very hard on the hands to cut the pattern from the fabric...

 ...but the most difficult part is to unfold the cut fabric and place it on the background cloth - this takes a long time!There just is no way to speed this part up...

And here is the cut fabric arranged as it should be, ready to be basted onto the fabric.
There are various ways of doing this - the traditional way was to pin paste it and then thread baste it, running a basting thread around the edge.

Today, I read that many people use spots of fabric glue to hold the applique fabric in place. However, I use safety pins as I am a bit lazy and it seems to work well. I have a large collection of safety pins!!

Over Christmas, I scanned and uploaded photos of my own quilts (ie not antique) to make quilt pages. I have not gotten around to labelling these quilts - but will start to publish the pages, and add the captions later.

I was struck down by the heavy cold that is sweeping Suffolk - I haven't have a bad cold for some time, but it took me about two weeks to get fully over this one - so apologies for not posting during that time.