hawaiian quilting

Some years ago I was visiting my grandma on Maui when she decided she would no longer be doing handwork. It had become too difficult to see up close to thread needles.


She passed me some fabric and also two unfinished pillows with Hawaiian quilting patterns on them. I don't think I can write well enough about the history of Hawaiian quilting to do it justice. Instead, I'll direct you here, where I'm sorry to discover that Poakalani Serrao, the woman who was probably the most prolific writer and teacher on the subject, has recently passed away.

I wish now that I had taken the time to iron them (but I guess I don't wish it enough to redo!). Grandma's pattern template sits in the lower left corner of each square so that you can see how the folding turns this little 45° wedge into the beautiful symmetry of the design. What is less clear from the photo is that the template was traced from her friend's copy onto a grocery bag; and that the cloth is a very coarse, but brightly dyed cotton. This is the fabric I always associated with Hawaii as a child. Now you can buy fine quilting cotton printed with orchids and other florals, but my memories of fabric shopping with my mom and grandma were all about these solids and a few simple prints in equally bold colors.


Grandma's pillows are both in the ulu (breadfruit) pattern. It seems to be the pattern that one sees the most, perhaps because it is fairly simple with nice curves or perhaps because, according to Poakalani, there is a tradition that once you make an ulu quilt you will never want for life's necessities. The ulu pattern is so strongly associated with Hawaii that it is even on a pair of earrings I bought when C was a baby.

My friend M has been making Hawaiian quilt squares recently and when she asked me to take a Hawaiian quilting class with her, I jumped. We went to the LQS last Sunday when everyone else was in Superbowl preparation mode.


The teacher likened it to cutting out paper snowflakes in school and sure enough, I had flashbacks of being in school: taking too long to decide on a pattern, talking too much, and suddenly realizing I was miles behind everyone else when we were supposed to be moving on. I came home with my piece only half-basted where the rest of the class was well into their needle turning. Oh well. My slowness is not really news.


Here is the design I'll be working on. The fabric choices are not traditional, since I was pulling from my stash the morning of the class. Can you guess what the pattern is called?

star quilt: finished at last

It's done. C slept under his sparkly stars last night.


You'd think I'd be elated about having one less project nagging at me, but I only feel a sort of tired relief—like when you've been in labor for hours and the baby is finally there, small and wet and wrinkled. Sure, you're happy, but you also can't help wondering: after all that effort, well, shouldn't it be a little more...attractive?


The free motion quilting turned out to be a bear. I finally gave up on the Singer and took out a newish (90's) Pfaff that had been passed to me when its owner died. This modern machine had several advantages over the vintage Singer:


1. electronic control, which allowed sewing at an even, steady speed.
2. an integrated walking foot, which made it easy to feed through the layers of the quilt.
3. a free motion foot calibrated specifically for it, rather than a generic aftermarket version.
4. needle stop in the down position (oh, how I love this feature now).


On the other hand, it had less space under the arm than my old machine, and it sat several inches above the table, forcing the quilt to go over it like a bump—not the easist way to sew a big project like this.


This is the best set up I could come up with: the quilt spreading out over two plastic folding tables, foot control against a weighted cooler so it wouldn't slide around, and me sitting on a barstool in order to gain a little elevation. But I still wished for a bigger machine surface to be able to freely move that quilt in all directions.

On the very last day, it occurred to me to search online for some product that might help. I found this. Too late for this quilt, but maybe not for the next.

star quilt: 7 months later

The center is quilted! C has been watching, asking, encouraging the process. He's very happy to see it taking shape. It occurred to me that he has never not known me to have this quilt or its predecessor in an unfinished state.

Free motion quilting is still new to me, so the quilting is...well, I tell myself that it's meant to match the wild imperfection of the star pattern. And I learned as I went: how to adjust the height of the foot to better skim the quilt using a hair band, how to bend the straight pin coming out of the foot to make better contact with screw that holds the needle in, and how to add some shrink tubing to dampen the sound once that contact is made.

For the outer borders, I decided to quilt from the back, following some matching stars in the print. The next step is flipping it over, repinning from the backing, and removing the pins from the top. Then we'll take another run and be ready to bind.

star quilt: finishing the top

This evening I made a change to my post on homemade fabric starch after more experience with it.

And as for the star quilt, here is what happened today.

First two inner border strips:

And the next two:

The second border:

And at last the star quilt top is finished, after 17 years of false starts and meanderings.

It may disappear from the blog for awhile, while we order fabric for the backing and decide how to use it. If you have experience working with Minky, I'd love to hear from you.

star quilt: homemade fabric starch

There is a question of prewashing fabrics before putting them in a quilt. I used to do it without question. Then Diana, the friend with the 301, mentioned that she never prewashes fabric. The sizing aids in precision cutting and piecing, she said, and when the quilt is washed, any shrinkage just gives it an old-fashioned quilted look.

So I stopped prewashing.

Recently, though, another friend emphasized that she always prewashes her quilting fabrics—argh! I decided to look into it.

It seems that, beyond the shrinkage question, there is some concern about fabric dyes bleeding out into lighter colors during the first wash. If that bleeding happens after the quilt is already together, all your hard work is ruined.

There is also the question of different fabrics shrinking in different degrees.

This quilt was started so long ago that I had prewashed most of the fabrics. Only the last few squares were made with fabric that I didn't bother to wash. Perhaps a goofy, misshapen quilt is in the future but at this point, if it's a finished quilt of any kind, I'll be happy.

My border fabrics have been sitting around long enough that they were also prewashed, except for the yellow. So I washed and dried that to match.

And then, doing some more reading, decided to starch the fabric to put back some of the stiffness that washing took away. I learned at this point that starch, being edible, will attract silverfish and other critters. A tradeoff that is mitigated by, yes, washing the quilt after it's been pieced.

On the plus side, it is easy to make homemade spray starch. There are many recipes. I chose the simplest, which made just enough to fill the spray bottle I had on hand. For future reference, I listed the ingredients on the side of the bottle. Some day I may make a cute little recipe label, but this is adequate for now.

Homemade Fabric Starch

Dissolve 1 Tbs. cornstarch in 1 pt. cool water. Bring to a boil, stirring or whisking to dissolve cornstarch completely. Let cool, then add 2-3 drops lavender essential oil and pour into a spray bottle. 

You can add more cornstarch if you want a stiffer fabric. The original recipe called for lemon juice, which I changed to lavender, as lavender is a natural insect repellent. Maybe this will compensate for any starch that happens to remain after washing.

There are boiled and non-boiled versions. Being lazy and impatient, I made a non-boiled version first, and it worked nicely the first day with a little shaking now and then.

However, after it sat overnight, the cornstarch was a solid mass on the bottom of the bottle. It struck me that I had just made a bottle of Oobleck! Trying to loosen the cornstarch, I ended up tapping the bottle so hard that the plastic cracked.

I decided at that point to boil the rest and sure enough, the cornstarch dissolved completely without any subsequent settling out. This is the recipe I would recommend and will use from now on. Boiling and cooling didn't add that much time in the end.

So there you have it:

Step One: Prewash fabric to shrink and remove excess dye.

Step Two: Spray with homemade starch during ironing to put back sizing elements lost during washing.

Step Three: Quilt as usual.

Step Four: Wash quilt to remove starch from Step Two so quilt won't be attractive to bugs.

Or, if you love the simple, unfussy life: don't prewash, assume that shrinkage will only emphasize the stitches and enhance the loveliness of the quilt, and use this at first washing.

star quilt: planning the borders

C doesn't sleep with a lot of bedding, so this quilt will instead be something he can wrap in while reading or watching a movie on a winter night. But the center block section is only 3'X4', which is too small. Adding plain fabric borders is the easiest way to enlarge a quilt like this, so over breakfast with a couple of quilting friends this morning, I scratched out an idea.

This was to be a blue 3" border to float the star blocks in, a thin yellow border for contrast, and a wide, dark blue border to really give it some width. I knew I had fabrics at home which would work for this.

At home, I laid whole pieces of fabric on top of each other to see how it looked.

Answer: awful.

There were so many blues in the star block backgrounds that the single shade looked muddy and out of place. I wondered about using only the yellow and the dark celestial print. The yellow did pop the stars out and unified the blocks nicely, but with only two colors, the darker border would have to be disproportionately large. I also found it a little boring.

We were surprised to realize that we all liked this last version best. DH felt it was like looking into a cloudy night sky and on up to the stars.

I wouldn't have thought putting a blue against another blue would be the smartest choice but after all, this is a quilt of only two colors. So unless I have a change of heart overnight, that's the plan. Perhaps the next blog post will include a photo of the finished top. :)

star quilt: countdown

After piecing together these blocks one by one, I can tell you that each square entailed, after cutting a rough piece of background fabric and some lighter colored strips for the stars:

4 big slashes
9 seams
9 presses with an iron
and 20 trimming cuts

So it made me happy to realize that all it would take to put 48 blocks together was:

12 seams

Just 12 passes through the sewing machine, and I'd have the main part of the top pieced!

The first 5 seams would be stitching the columns to each other using the chain piecing technique.

Here they are sewn together. The rows are only connected via a bit of thread.

Clip the threads and you have 8 rows, each comprised of 6 connected blocks.

At this point, the seams are pressed flat so that the rows fit together more readily. Normally, you would press toward the dark fabric and not the light as I have done here; but the random block layout and the need to stagger the way the blocks are pressed caused there to be some variations.

Seams 6-9 involve sewing sets of rows together.

And seams 10-12 are a matter of sewing those sets to each other.

Voilà! The main blocks put together with 12 seams. In theory, it could have been done with fewer, using more chain piecing and snipping; but this way I didn't have to worry about losing the arrangement.

All these 1/4" seams have shrunk the piece a few inches each way. It is now roughly 4'X3' and will need some borders if it is to be large enough to sleep under. Another drawback to working so slowly on a baby quilt: when the baby grows, the quilt has to grow, too!

star quilt: using an old iron

C's baby quilt has had a few incarnations in its 17-year life. It started as a handsewn applique quilt on a bright pink background (I know: ewww).


When C was old enough to voice his opinion, he let me know that as long as I hadn't finished, he would rather have a quilt with "sparkly stars" on it. I began anew with some standard star blocks, and the project evolved from The Baby Quilt to The Star Quilt.


A couple years after that, I saw a star pattern that truly looked like it was sparkling, so ditched the old blocks to start over once again. With great optimism, I even purchased some fabric that was printed with "2000" because, I told C, that was the year by which he'd certainly have the finished quilt. We began calling it The Millennium Quilt.

Fast forward 11 years. Where does the time go? Well, I had another baby; we joined our local homeschooling community in earnest; and my quilting friends with whom I had been meeting monthly either moved away or had life changes that made it harder to get together. Or maybe the life changes were mine. I don't think there was any one reason in particular, but the Baby-Star-Millennium Quilt somehow took a backseat to other things for a long, long while.


However, I've been working on these blocks many afternoons in a row now, and this morning I woke feeling sure I would finish.


Except that the iron would no longer heat up.


From my fabric shelf, I pulled down a vintage Singer electric iron I'd found at a thrift store a few years ago. It's a tiny little thing, but heavy. A whopping 250 watts. Notice it not only has no fabric settings, it doesn't even have an on/off switch. Plug it in, and it starts to heat up.

Singer iron "Model T"

I figured it should work just fine. It did—maybe a little more than fine, in fact, because the fabric instantly scorched.

But sense memory came through again: as soon as I smelled that burnt-marshmallow scent, I remembered that Mom had always kept a folded, dampened cloth by her ironing. It both cooled the iron down and protected the piece from direct heat.

In this way, I was able to piece the last few stars. There are 48 total in this quilt, but I ended up with 15 extra blocks. As I went along, I could see that some of them just weren't going to make the cut. I love the celestial pattern in this background, but finally had to acknowledge that the fabric was too thin and flimsy:

And this background looks distractingly pale next to the other blocks:

These just came out ugly and misshapen:

And in some cases, I simply pieced too many of one shade:

I'll use the rejected blocks for other projects but meanwhile, here are the blocks that made it into the quilt. Arranging them was a little like doing a sudoku puzzle. No adjacent background fabrics could be the same.

After getting the fabrics lined up, I turned some of them around to give the quilt more twinkle. I hope these are the sparkly stars C had in his head when he was a little guy.

Next stage: putting the blocks together.


I'll be using the new iron I got as soon as I had time today. The little Singer can go back to its place on the shelf.

quilting on a singer 301

quilting UFOs

The term UFO is quilting lingo for "UnFinished Object"—all those bits of fabric which were intended for quilts but haven't quite made it there yet. They might be in any stage: single blocks, partially pieced tops, even quilts that are nearly complete but haven't been bound around the edges yet.


I recently took out all my ufos and decided to get them into quilts once and for all, no matter how long and tedious the process. Both kids are suddenly more independent, and there are large swaths of time that I haven't  had since they were small. I counted: there are at least ten quilts' worth of blocks stacked up. Among them is C's baby quilt.


C turns 18 in a few months, so this has really gone on too long.


I'm sewing on a singer 301, which is my very favorite machine for this kind of work. I'll never forget arriving at my friend Diana's years ago to sew together for the first time. Stepping inside, I could hear the soft rattle of her machine running the living room, and a sudden Proustian rush caused me to blurt out, "That's the machine my mom had when I was little!"


Of course, I had no way of knowing whether it was true or not; I'd learned to sew on a Touch and Sew. But somehow the distinctive chug of the 301 made me think of sitting under a table, or of drifting off to sleep. When I found one for sale nearby, I bought it immediately, even though it seemed expensive at $100. I just wanted to hear that sound when I sewed.


And as it turns out, the machine has been well worth it. The 301 makes a reliable straight stitch, needs almost no adjusting and, at 17 lbs, is light enough to move easily while also sitting solidly on the table.

It's also beautiful. I believe it's the last black-and-gold sewing machine Singer made, although it also came in tan and tan/white versions. Someone once said it looks like an old locomotive engine, and I think that's pretty good description.


More recently, S remarked that it reminds him of Christopher, the alien in the movie District 9. It's...possible, I suppose, depending on your point of view. Can you see it?

In any case, this has been my go-to portable for years; and I have been using it to finish up these old blocks, particularly the blocks that will make up C's quilt.


(Please bear with me a minute while I shift gears.)


When Dad died 3 years ago, my sisters and I discovered how much and how thoroughly he had saved. It wasn't quite an episode of Hoarders, but let's say it made my fabric stash seem tame. In spare bedrooms and up in the garage rafters were boxes full of ledgers, receipts, photos, letters—50+ years of a family's minutiae. I wish I'd been able to go through everything at leisure, but we were focused on getting the house ready to sell so instead buzzed through it all quickly, glancing and shredding over and over again. Because there were three of us tossing these papers in succession for hours each day, I considered it sheer luck that one piece which ended up in my hands was a receipt dated a month after Mom and Dad married. It was for a sewing machine.


A Singer 301.


The machine had cost $175, which I'd learned a few minutes earlier was Dad's entire monthly salary at the time. It was their first major purchase together.


Mom's 301 was clearly an indispensable tool, an investment in keeping household costs down. I'm sure the reason its sound was so recognizable to me is that she used it daily when I was young, making clothes and toys for three growing children. She even made us quilts from the leftover fabric. Mom's sewing skills far surpassed mine, but the quilt she made for my bed was not a pastime she could afford to spend years on. It was made without the luxury of choosing prints and colors, pieced simply, and batted with a wool army blanket.

I remember looking at this quilt knowing which garments each of the fabrics had come from. At night, its weight was warm and comforting and helped me sleep. I suppose that is the reward all quiltmakers want, to know that someone is sleeping peacefully under their work.


With that in mind, I'd better get back to the quilt I've been making C for the past 17 years.


I wonder if he'll remember the sound of it being sewn.