Indigo art and quilts

Pleasure to meet up with Wendy and hear the story of her wonderful indigo creations, which make their way into her quilts. Her are some of her original designs with a Hawaiian feel.

Big and little Honus [turtles] swim across this block.

Love the texture of the stitching captured by the dye process.
 

To Waikiki

Leaving the Big Island I took the short flight to land in Honolulu Airport, Oahu. This photo is of the Kona Airport and shows hula dancers captured in bronze and the yellow graphics are of petroglyphs found on the island. Will have to get to those next time!

Look hard- there it is, the sea! Waikiki is like the Gold Coast in Queensland, high rise accommodation and shops with a white sand beach and palm trees. This view is from the 17th floor.

You could rent a board for the day.

Or have your photo taken with Duke, the famous local surfer, his bronze arms covered in leis.

The coconut palms are so picturesque here- postcard perfect.

I'm waiting and watching for the moment when the sun dips below the horizon. Living on the Eastern seaboard we see sunrises over the ocean.

Aaah, that's better, aloha.
 

Laupahoehoe Point

The rugged coastline on the Eastern side of the Big Island, with black volcanic rock and pounding sea.

Repurposing

A great way to repurpose practice quilting pieces is to paint over the texture generated by the quilting. We used up paint in our rollers on this piece that had a bright yellow background and it was interesting to see how changed it was by the end of the day.

 

Simple beauty

Simple ingenuity and beauty from a palm frond, snapped in a café; onion and garlic hang on display.

This taro garden is watered simply by the run-off from the sloping ground.

Palm seed hang in a decorative veil.

Fabric

This Hawaiian Sunbonnet Sue pattern is by Donna H Fear and is a great interpretation of an old classic.

Some of these bright Hawaiian fabrics would be great in quilts. A few yards came home in my luggage.

Phyllis Cullen in her beautiful studio by the sea, uses many bright, strong colours in her work. Here she is holding Last Rays in her stained glass style.
 

Beautiful Banyan

The climate promotes healthy growth of everything! I fell in love with the Banyan trees and this specimen at Rainbow Falls, near Hilo was so huge and had connected with another close by, or perhaps it was an offshoot. The canopy is so lacy with filtered light.

This Pacific Tsunami Museum is a reminder that there is also danger in Paradise. In 1954 Hilo and other areas, were devastated by a tsunami.

 

Island food

I did try some special Island food- some tasted good others....well, I can say been there, eaten that! These purple sweet potato chips were tasty. We didn't buy the taro chips- next time?

The chip is on the left and canned coffee, something I don't drink in Australia.

Had to try Musubi, especially with Spam, which was a tinned meat we took when we went camping in the 1970's.

Sushi rice and spam- not something I'm rushing back for.

Taking Leaf of my Senses

This was a great workshop to have in Hawaii, where the foliage for printing is interesting and BIG. Above L-R Patsy and Elsie.

Thanks to Phyllis and Karen from Quilt Passions who made it happen. The classroom is a lovely large space with special quilts of the Hawaiian style hanging along the back wall.

Phyllis making some decisions.

Brenda and one of her finished pieces.

Paulette designing her piece.

Joy used a number of different shaped leaves to great effect.

Dianne printed these twice over each other in black and then gold. Hard to see the great effect here but it was lovely on the linen.

L-R front Susan, Annabelle, Dianne, Elsie. Back L-R Linda, Dianne, Joy, Carlene, Elaine, Phyllis, Kristina, Brenda, Patsy, Paulette. Mahalo for a great day everyone.

This gives you an idea of the size of some of the leaves and these were the small ones from this tree.

As the sun sets

Have arrived back in Australia and happy to be home, but missing all my new friends and the great things about Hawaii. So as the sun sets on another day in Kailua Kona, I will keep sharing the experience with you for a little longer. Please indulge me!

The beach bar Huggo's is the spot some of us gathered.

It was happy [couple of] hour!

So easy to be casual with this for the floor and sipping a Hawaiian Sunset cocktail.

Fond memories L-R Joy, Donna, me, Linda and Paulette, seated.

With a Slider and Mai Tai thrown into the mix also! 

Lunch

This was delicious- shrimp and crab with pesto and 4 different cheeses toasted, plus potato salad- that is the purple scoop! The purple colour comes from the purple fleshed sweet potato.

A sign

Lots of Hawaiian names to get my tongue around. They use 12 letters in their alphabet so there is a lot of repetition.

Signs in other countries are always interesting and intriguing to me, so here are a few I have snapped so far. The one above also had some thing about Ex President Bush on it.

Hard to read this road sign but I think we were at altitude and Mauna Kea is just visible above the thick cloud cover. There is an observatory on the summit and it snows.