I Made a [Pineapple] Quilt

I am going to call it Hala Kahiki because that's Hawaiian for pineapple.

Last March I made a small pineapple quilt - can you call it a quilt if it only measures 23 x 30cm? Anyway, it hangs on the wall in the lounge. Since then I have been wanting to make a big one. Our Monday Modern Ugly Brown challenge provided the opportunity. Poor old brown has a bad rep. When quilts with brown in them get shared, often the comment 'that's a nice brown' is made - like all browns are ugly. So someone came up with the idea of Monday Modern Ugly Brown challenge. Liz and her daughter went Spotlight shopping for some ugly brown and we were challenged with using our eighth in something quilted.

I used a 100% wool batting and hand quilted it. I used diagonal 3" crosshatch for the pineapple and tied where the lines intersected because you know how pineapples aren't smooth skinned. I did lines 1.5" apart on the leaves. And 3" regular crosshatching on the brown.

 

I found this island-style backing at The Fabric Store in Otara. It is a nice deep brown and appropriately island-ish for a pineapple quilt.

Being wool and hand quilted, this quilt is super snuggly.

Original quilt - Sassafras Lane Designs.

A Pineapple and an Elephant (or five)

I think this pineapple featured in one of those weekly emails from a fabric shop. Pineapples remind me of Hawaii, and I do love Hawaiian holidays.

Anyway, the original free pattern and instructions can be found here at Sassafras Lane Designs. I am yet to quilt and bind my effort.

Now the elephants I saw in a link on Lee's Wednesday WIP @ Freshly Pieced. They come from Lorna @ Sew Fresh Quilts. When I saw the pattern, I thought I really couldn't be bothered with all that cutting - couldn't it just be paper-pieced. I googled paper-pieced elephants and they all had millions more pieces! So I cut just enough for one, to test it out.

I found it went from this to this ...

and then to this ...

... fairly painlessly. So I made 4 more. And when I photograph them, I will make sure the foot on the back leg isn't bent under.

I took the idea for a blue rather than white background from Rachel's photo in the flickr group.

It is a B x B QAL, but I am late to that party and may or may not catch up/keep up. I am also not loving the frog. I don't like them in real life. They give me the creeps.