Hawaiian Shirt Quilt

I was looking for something fun to make my husband for Father’s Day. I’ve only made him one other quilt. This rag quilt using John Wayne flannel fabric. I made it as I had wanted to try making a rag quilt, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t really like it. But he loves the quilt, especially since it has John Wayne on it.

As I was searching for something fun, I saw a few people posting on social media quilts that had Hawaiian shirts, and I knew it was perfect! I love Hawaiian shirts, and so does hubby, even though he doesn’t own that many. 

The pattern is called Sunshine and is available from Moda’s website in their free patterns sections here.

Fabric choices

Finding fabric that looked like a Hawaiian shirt was a bit challenging. The fabric that was used in this pattern is out of print, and they were perfect! 

My closest local quilt shop was shutting down as the owner was retiring. Which of course meant that there were huge sales of all the leftover stock! I went to their website to see what they had and made a shopping list. Well, I made a list, but you know I bought more than what was on the list. I couldn’t resist!

Here’s the fabric haul I brought home!!!

I have no idea what I’m going to do with this fabric, but I saw Queens on it and knew I had to have it!

I’m so going to miss being able to just grab random fat quarters and fat eighths from this quilt shop!! It was always so much fun to just grab whatever caught my eye to use in a future scrappy project.

Making the shirts

The pattern is really easy to follow, but I will admit I had a hard time getting the two halves of the shirts and their collars to line up properly. I was a bit upset at first, and then remembered, this was for my husband, the most supportive man in the world, who wouldn’t mind that it wasn’t perfect!! 

The pattern calls for stars as the cornerstones, but I decided to go simple and just use blocks. I used this really pretty blue fabric that looks like water for the cornerstones and the outside border.

It took me longer to finish this top as I did have a few urgent projects that I ended up having to finish first. Instead of a Father’s Day gift, this turned into a birthday gift, as John’s birthday is in August. 

The actual quilting!

I was so happy when I was finally able to get the top on my quilt frame! I was practicing some ruler work for the next quilt I had planned, and did a combo of free motion quilting and ruler work.

Here I even practiced some cursive writing quilting in some of the sashing areas.

I went a little crazy with the quilting, but it was soooo much fun not having to really worry about what I did where. I tried to not duplicate the same thing in blocks that were near each other, and tried to come up with something fun and different in each block. This was a true practice and have fun quilt!

The finished quilt!

It was finished a day past his birthday, but John didn’t complain he loves it and even helped me take it outside for a quilt photo shoot!!

I love how soft and crinkly it got after washing!! That’s my favorite part of making a quilt that will be used and washed often. Getting it nice and soft.

I used a dark indigo fabric for the binding, which I really like how it framed the entire quilt. The batting is Quilter’s Dream Cotton Select. It’s my favorite batting brand and always quilts up so nicely!

And of course I used my Q’nique 19x Elite! Interested in your own 19x? Click here to see all my favorite Grace Company products!

Happy Quilting!