Hawaiian Dancer

I just finished this beautiful applique Hawaiian quilt for a customer named Christi. She was raised in Hawaii and made this quilt for her mother who was a dancer in Hawaii. I don't know if you call it hula dancer but she was a performer in shows featuring Hawaiian customs, music and dancing. She had lots of customs made of cotton. So Christi decided to make a memory quilt for a her mother's 83rd birthday and use pieces of the customs and photos of her mother. It is like a tribute to her mother.

I did not want to steal the show with my quilting so I did simple echo around the big petal shapes and ditchwork around the applique. I put in some fern in the foliage blocks. But I kept it simple. I really wanted to put a digitized hibiscus flower design called Aloha from Legacy quilting but I did not want to steal the show. With the applique using different fabrics and photos, the quilt had a lot going on already.


So I finished it and called her to let her know that it was done. She was excited (maybe because I have had it in my studio for 2 months...). Then I told her that I had wanted to put in the hibiscus in between the applique petals. She suddenly got very quiet and I was thinking that it was a REALLY good thing that I had not put the hibiscus flowers in there. It had sparked a memory for her. She said that she remembered as a kid growing up in Hawaii, every time her mother or grandmother went out for the day, they always put a hibiscus flower in their hair. She definitely wanted me to put the hibiscus flowers in the quilt.



I put the quilt back on the machine but had to run into town before finishing the quilting. I ran into Christi and she had printed off a current photo of her mother (who is still a knock-out at age 83), Christi and her grandson, Nainoa which in Hawaiian means "the navigator".

I hope her mother likes the quilt.