My Sister's Quilt or I've Drunk the Kool-Aid and I Feel Fine

When my sister, Dana, was here to visit last year for Thanksgiving, I told her I was going to make her a quilt as her Christmas gift. I also added the clause that I would not have it done on time to wrap and place under the tree, and she was okay with the stipulation.

During her stay we went through most of the fabrics I have in my stash and picked out contenders. As we travelled around the island like we always do, we popped into every fabric shop on the island to buy fabrics that could supplement what we already had chosen. (And please don't think this was an extensive undertaking; I can count the number of shops on one hand, and that is 5 if you include Walmart as a fabric store!) We both gravitated like moths to a flame to these two new fabrics from Michele D'Amore's Tropical Sun-Kissed collection. This pattern was one that I admired so much it had me wishing I had designed it myself and the one print, in two sizes, became the basis of the quilt.

 

So I now have to admit that I have drunk the Kool-Aid and I feel fine. It was so refreshing to work with fabrics with a white ground and having dived into the whiteness of the Modern Quilt Guild mentality, I can truly see the excitement in the concept. I was so taken with the idea that the backing is of Michael Miller's Cotton Couture in soft white with a small pieced stripe strategically placed down the center. I also bound the quilt in snow Rock Candy. (Oh, and I also discovered that I need to take some classes and learn how to shoot white objects in a white room with full late-afternoon Maui sunshine. I had to readjust these images to get the colors to pop the way they should but they are not over-exaggerated - the colors are all wonderfully saturated pastels.)

I find it more fun to take on the challenge of working with triangles, to match the pieces to get the points dead on perfect, so I use very large triangles (12" wide at the base x 13" high from the bottom to the apex of the point) in my bed quilts.

From the scraps I made two standard-sized pillow cases - soft white with Tropical Sun-Kissed trim and this pieced decorative pillow. The other fabric that seemed to be part of the backbone of the quilt is my Siren Song. You'll notice it mixed in regularly and I love the way it just seems to be a natural color bridge to pull all of the other fun prints together!