Hawaiian Applique Cushions

As I am sure you all know by now, I do love a bit of applique. So when Alice, the editor of Love Patchwork and Quilting, asked me to do my interpretation of Hawaiian Applique I jumped at the chance.

And look it made the cover of issue 50! There are some fantastic projects in this issue and as it is a special birthday number they have a fantastic 50% off subscription offer!

I made two different cushions, both with bold solid colour combinations. As this issue is so jam-packed the template for the orange and green version is available from their blog here.

19^th century missionaries brought the art of patchwork to Hawaii, and the native woman made it their own with applique designs based on the flora and fauna of the Island, as well as more spiritual symbolism of gods, legends and emotions. Hawaiian women still gather in quilting circles to work on these intricate designs all based around folded patterns. 

My designs are a simplified, modern interpretation of Hawaiian applique, but I do use the traditional techniques. If you want to know more about Hawaiian Applique and try out some traditional patterns then I would recommend the Poakalani books.

There is a long lead time for the magazine projects so I was actually stitching one of these when I was at QuiltCon. It was one of the first projects I used the new Aurifil 80wt threads with and they worked like a dream.

They are very relaxing and meditative to do but be warned, they are laborious, I reckon they took at least 10 hours each to complete!