Preamble
For your convenience, I have listed other posts in this series on this blogspot:
Hawaiian Quilts - Part I
Hawaiian Quilts - Part II
Hawaiian Quilts - Part III
Introduction [1]
By the 1870s Hawaiians had developed their own approach to quilt design, filling the entire top of their quilts with a single large appliqué. To make appliqué quilts, Hawaiians typically folded the piece of cloth from which the appliqué is to be cut, in eighths. Usually the fabric is folded in half vertically, the left side brought over to meet the right edge. The second fold is horizontal again halving the fabric by bringing the top down to meet the bottom edge. The third and final fold creates a triangle by drawing the top right corner down to the lower left corner. The fabric is ironed after each fold to lay the seam as flat as possible.
Fabric folded into eighths.
The quilter then pencils on the appliqué design, which, like the folded fabric, is exactly one-eight the size of the quilt. Early quilters drew their designs free-hand directly on the cloth; paper and cloth patterns came into use in the nineteenth century.
Appliqué design is exactly one-eighth of the quilt.
After tracing, the pattern is ready to be cut. All eight layers of the folded fabric are cut at the same time. (Some of today's quilters skip the folding by cutting around a full paper pattern. Usually the border design is cut first and then the central design.
Unfold your cut out design, then pin or glue to the white background fabric leaving a space to turn your applique edge.
After carefully unfolding the material to reveal the symmetrical cutwork design, the appliqué is placed on a solid-coloured quilt top and, working from the center out to the edges and border, basted in place with long stitches. The basting holds the material in place while much finer and more closely spaced invisible hand appliqué stitching is applied to finish the job. When the needlework of the top is completed, batting is placed between the top and a backing fabric, which is usually a piece of solid coloured cloth that matches the background color of the top.
Both in technique and style, Hawaiian appliqué bears a striking resemblance to the cut paper work that was popular in the northern eastern United States during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Many Pennsylvania Germans practiced scherenschnitte, a form of decorative folded paper cutting common in German-speaking areas of Europe. Similar cut paper designs were executed by New England schoolgirls, who crafted valentines, memorials, and pastoral pictures with scissors. Although no documentary evidence has been found to confirm the theory, paper cutting may well have been introduced to Hawaii by missionaries who were familiar with it.
Hawaiian Quilt Designs - Part IV [1]
Artists Alice Mahelona: Bird of Paradise (ca 1925).
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted.
Size: 83 x 79 inches.
Mission House Museum, Honolulu.
Gift of Margo Armitage Morgan.
Comment[1]: The addition of a number of small, appliqué tricoloured flowers between the center and border motifs brightens and enlivens the quilt's highly stylized design. The unusual combination of Jazz Age colors, including jade green, lemon yellow, pink, and dark blue, probably reflects the wide range of cotton fabrics available to the professional dressmaker in the 1920s. The quilt is backed with a sheet of bright pink fabric.
Artists Unknown: Unnamed Floral Pattern (ca 1930).
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted.
Size: 92 x 84 inches.
Collection of Susan Parrish Antiques.
Comment[1]: Although most Hawaiian quilts are square, this example was made in a slightly elongated shape to accommodate its unusual overall design. The central fits within a square. However, the quilt maker decided to extend the design to fit a rectangle shape. To fill out the corners of the rectangle, the quilter has added an almost complete, nearly exact mirror image of the floral design unit that repeats four times to form the interlocking pattern.
Artists Mary Kaulahao: Flower Vase of the ('Iolani') Palace (ca 1930).
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted.
Size: 92 x 84 inches.
Collection of Lyman House Memorial Museum.
Comment[1]: Iolani is Hawaiian for 'Bird of Heaven'. The design for this quilt was inspired by the etched pattern on the glass doors of 'Iolani Palace in Honolulu. This quilt embodies the strong nationalistic feelings of most Hawaiians of the period, who correctly feared their islands and their sovereignty would be ultimately wrested from them by foreigners.
Artists Unknown: Unnamed Floral Pattern (ca 1930).
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted.
Size: 78.5 x 75 inches.
The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont.
Comment[1]: This quilt's dynamic appliqué cut-out creates a pattern that combines positive (blue-on-white) and negative (white-on-blue) designs of equal size and strength. Two almost identical enclosed large half-circular white-on-blue designs fill the sides of the quilt's central X shape and create a powerful visual pulse at the quilt's center.
Artists Hannah Ku'umililani Cummings Baker: Pikake and Tuberose (ca 1938).
Materials and Techniques: Plain woven cotton, hand appliqué and quilted, with machine stitched edging.
Size: 86 x 86 inches.
The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont.
Comment[1]: This lovely, lay quilt is typical of Baker's best work, combining a strong central design with a complex, complementary border and detailed quilting.
Artists Unknown: Unnamed Floral Print (ca 1940).
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted, with machine stitched edging.
Size: 85 x 81 inches.
Collection of Ardis and Robert James.
Comment[1]: This bold red-on-white design sets a large cross shape at the center of the quilt and adds V-shaped forms, suggestive of potted plants, in the four corners. A small, negative white diamond at the very center is echoed by the overall form of the central design. The cross shape is filled out with a repeating pattern of smaller floral designs set on and within a linear framework that makes up a four-pointed star.
Artists Unknown: Ka Ua Kani Lehua [The Rain That Rustles Lehua Blossoms] (ca 1940-50).
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted, with machine stitched edging.
Size: 84 x 78 inches.
Private Collection.
Comment[1]: Lehua blossoms are among those most commonly used for leis, the garland made of flowers, hair, leaves, nuts, shells, or other natural objects that have been made and worn by Hawaiians for centuries. Early Hawaiians identified themselves with particular natural objects and often wore or gave leis made from their personal totems.
Reference:
[1] Hawaiian Quilt Masterpieces, Robert Shaw, Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc., China, 1996, ISBN 0-88363-396-5.
For your convenience, I have listed other posts in this series on this blogspot:
Hawaiian Quilts - Part I
Hawaiian Quilts - Part II
Hawaiian Quilts - Part III
Introduction [1]
By the 1870s Hawaiians had developed their own approach to quilt design, filling the entire top of their quilts with a single large appliqué. To make appliqué quilts, Hawaiians typically folded the piece of cloth from which the appliqué is to be cut, in eighths. Usually the fabric is folded in half vertically, the left side brought over to meet the right edge. The second fold is horizontal again halving the fabric by bringing the top down to meet the bottom edge. The third and final fold creates a triangle by drawing the top right corner down to the lower left corner. The fabric is ironed after each fold to lay the seam as flat as possible.
The quilter then pencils on the appliqué design, which, like the folded fabric, is exactly one-eight the size of the quilt. Early quilters drew their designs free-hand directly on the cloth; paper and cloth patterns came into use in the nineteenth century.
After tracing, the pattern is ready to be cut. All eight layers of the folded fabric are cut at the same time. (Some of today's quilters skip the folding by cutting around a full paper pattern. Usually the border design is cut first and then the central design.
After carefully unfolding the material to reveal the symmetrical cutwork design, the appliqué is placed on a solid-coloured quilt top and, working from the center out to the edges and border, basted in place with long stitches. The basting holds the material in place while much finer and more closely spaced invisible hand appliqué stitching is applied to finish the job. When the needlework of the top is completed, batting is placed between the top and a backing fabric, which is usually a piece of solid coloured cloth that matches the background color of the top.
Both in technique and style, Hawaiian appliqué bears a striking resemblance to the cut paper work that was popular in the northern eastern United States during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Many Pennsylvania Germans practiced scherenschnitte, a form of decorative folded paper cutting common in German-speaking areas of Europe. Similar cut paper designs were executed by New England schoolgirls, who crafted valentines, memorials, and pastoral pictures with scissors. Although no documentary evidence has been found to confirm the theory, paper cutting may well have been introduced to Hawaii by missionaries who were familiar with it.
Hawaiian Quilt Designs - Part IV [1]
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted.
Size: 83 x 79 inches.
Mission House Museum, Honolulu.
Gift of Margo Armitage Morgan.
Comment[1]: The addition of a number of small, appliqué tricoloured flowers between the center and border motifs brightens and enlivens the quilt's highly stylized design. The unusual combination of Jazz Age colors, including jade green, lemon yellow, pink, and dark blue, probably reflects the wide range of cotton fabrics available to the professional dressmaker in the 1920s. The quilt is backed with a sheet of bright pink fabric.
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted.
Size: 92 x 84 inches.
Collection of Susan Parrish Antiques.
Comment[1]: Although most Hawaiian quilts are square, this example was made in a slightly elongated shape to accommodate its unusual overall design. The central fits within a square. However, the quilt maker decided to extend the design to fit a rectangle shape. To fill out the corners of the rectangle, the quilter has added an almost complete, nearly exact mirror image of the floral design unit that repeats four times to form the interlocking pattern.
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted.
Size: 92 x 84 inches.
Collection of Lyman House Memorial Museum.
Comment[1]: Iolani is Hawaiian for 'Bird of Heaven'. The design for this quilt was inspired by the etched pattern on the glass doors of 'Iolani Palace in Honolulu. This quilt embodies the strong nationalistic feelings of most Hawaiians of the period, who correctly feared their islands and their sovereignty would be ultimately wrested from them by foreigners.
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted.
Size: 78.5 x 75 inches.
The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont.
Comment[1]: This quilt's dynamic appliqué cut-out creates a pattern that combines positive (blue-on-white) and negative (white-on-blue) designs of equal size and strength. Two almost identical enclosed large half-circular white-on-blue designs fill the sides of the quilt's central X shape and create a powerful visual pulse at the quilt's center.
Materials and Techniques: Plain woven cotton, hand appliqué and quilted, with machine stitched edging.
Size: 86 x 86 inches.
The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont.
Comment[1]: This lovely, lay quilt is typical of Baker's best work, combining a strong central design with a complex, complementary border and detailed quilting.
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted, with machine stitched edging.
Size: 85 x 81 inches.
Collection of Ardis and Robert James.
Comment[1]: This bold red-on-white design sets a large cross shape at the center of the quilt and adds V-shaped forms, suggestive of potted plants, in the four corners. A small, negative white diamond at the very center is echoed by the overall form of the central design. The cross shape is filled out with a repeating pattern of smaller floral designs set on and within a linear framework that makes up a four-pointed star.
Materials and Techniques: Cottons, hand appliqué and quilted, with machine stitched edging.
Size: 84 x 78 inches.
Private Collection.
Comment[1]: Lehua blossoms are among those most commonly used for leis, the garland made of flowers, hair, leaves, nuts, shells, or other natural objects that have been made and worn by Hawaiians for centuries. Early Hawaiians identified themselves with particular natural objects and often wore or gave leis made from their personal totems.
Reference:
[1] Hawaiian Quilt Masterpieces, Robert Shaw, Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc., China, 1996, ISBN 0-88363-396-5.
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