Summaries & Saying Goodbye to #408 in Kihei, HI

I first came in Maui in 2002. I came on Feb 14 & left the 21st. The first morning I was here Gene & Ellie took me for a morning walk on Sugar Beach.  I met George. He had befriended Gene, my uncle.

And so began my relationship with Maui.  Two years later I started a correspondence with George and two years after we got married.

As we are now packing up 408 & preparing to move out I thought I'd show some of the quilts I made while I was here. This was a mosaic I made from dishes from Zimbabwe!

The ones that I associate the most with being on Maui are one2 I made in my "triangle period". These three were my first real foray into quilting by machine.

The colors came from an amazing lucky-find tablecloth I got on Maui. I think of the Bird of Paradise flower! I love what can be done with shapes that are slightly "off".  They add so much character to work.

There also was a 3-month period, another year, in which I did concentric circles. I did quite a few in Maui. I have sub-standard photos, but I am beyond feeling/being fussy/proud about this.

This is a detail of one.

 All the circles were done by "raw appliqué" -- no edges turned under.

They were all quilted by hand.

Then there was the winter of stripes = simplicity!! I sewed together bands of color, may 6 or 7 of them.
I thought of them as chords. Then the chords were assembled into compositions. I loved/love this way of working. Here are various chords. These were hung over a door where I could think about them!

Here are some of the subsequent pieced products...

This one had a comical story My chords all curved. So I inserted wedges to straighten the curves out a bit.

This final one is after quilting on a huge quilting machine I use "upcountry".

Me, driving the quilting machine & loving it.

Thanks to Russell whose machine it is (a Hamill) & who was such a gracious helper! 

OTHERS...

I called this one Yellow Ladder.

And then this...

This was the Left-Overs Scrap Quilt from all the striped quilts. Waste not, want not!

So all of these came from the year 2010-11. Then came the Year of the Retinal Tear, 2011-12.

These are the last ones I composed here. This one was done entirely by hand.  My machine was getting serviced in Honolulu. And I couldn't read because of the retinal tear repair. I had time for handwork!

Green Triangles.

This one I made with a gift from Karla Thompson.  I started it here in April & finished it in Vancouver.

I'm amazed when I look at this body of work that Maui has inspired in me.

Thanks to Russell, Marilyn at the Maui Quilt Shop, Shawn King (my sewing teacher for several years), Michael James, book which got me thinking about stripes again (which I found at the Maui Quilt Guild), Barb Jenks who took me to the Maui Quilt Guild & George who didn't fuss about apartment fabric mess.

That's it for now.