Last fall my husband and I spent a fabulous week on Kauai–seeing the sites, snorkeling, golfing, soaring in ultralights (that’s me in the back)…

One day we went to see all the art galleries in Hanapepe and stumbled into The Art of Marbling Gallery which features marbled sarongs and scarves by Becky Wold and amazing wood bowls by Rob Bader.  My husband, the woodworker, was captivated by the turned bowls while I loved the scarves.  When Becky heard I was a quilter, she brought out a couple of scarf “seconds” which didn’t meet her standards.  I bought them, knowing they’d make a great quilt with memories of Kauai.  Here are the scarves–they really remind me of the waves in Kauai.

When I started making the quilt, I wanted to capture the feel of the waves, but I didn’t have much else in the way of a plan.  Since the silk was very sheer, I first backed each scarf with a lightweight fusible interfacing.  I chose to use plain white cotton fabric along with the marbled fabric so that the marbled fabric would be the star.

I finally worked up the courage to cut into the scarves and I cut free-form shapes and pieced the silk to the white cotton.  Here are a few of the first pieces.

I kept cutting and sewing and accumulated more pieces.

Next I started putting pieces together and working on possible layouts.

I also played around with the pieces on the computer to generate a couple layout options, such as this one.

Here’s another layout option on my design wall.

And here’s another layout with more pieces sewn together–almost the final version.

In my next post, I’ll show the process to get to my completed quilt.

On Kauai we stayed in Poipu, near Moir Gardens.

Sunset on the beach.