We took a trip to two islands in Hawaii - Kauai  and Oahu.  We stayed a week on each island. The "we" of this trip was my husband Frank, son Travis, grandson Jordan, mother Mary Ellen, and step-father Frank Davis.  The second week, brother Dwayne and his wife Rhonda joined us.

On July 28, 2003, we went to a fabric shop, of course! I had only been quilting for 9 years, but I had learned the value of building a "stash". LOL I had only made pieced bed quilts with patterns up to this point, but I wanted to do something to commemorate our trip for mother.   I had Travis and Mom pick out some Hawaiian fabric.  I wanted to make some memory quilts with my photos of the trip. I loved photography even then.

Mom picked out a black fabric with Hawaiian girls dancing.

I bought 5 1/2 yards of the black with the Hawaiian girls at $3.00 yard for $16.00. Can you believe that, with prices being up to $12.00 and more now. I purchased $37.00 worth of Colorfast packets for printing the pictures, and batting was $6.00. I also purchased several fabrics for the colorwash squares. This is the last quilt for which I kept records of how much it cost. And with the variety of fabrics, I didn't keep track of all of it. After that point, I got hooked on designing my own quilts. To do that,  you usually go to your stash and you never know how much the fabric cost when you bought it, and you might only use a 2" strip out of the piece.

I picked out a pattern I liked (with my favorite 2" squares), and inserted photos in place of the blocks in the pattern.  I kept track of each time I started working on this quilt and found that I spent 5 hours on the appliqué, 34 hours piecing, 11 hours quilting stitch in the ditch, 10 hours of free motion, and 6 1/2 hours selecting and printing the pictures, etc. for a total of 66 1/2 hours.

I alternated the pictures with some blocks of appliqué, like the images on the next page, in order to brighten it up, as Mom wanted to use it for a lap quilt and I knew it would get washed and probably fade the photos somewhat. You'll notice that the appliqué blocks were images I had cut out of fabric. I was just getting into appliqué at that point and did not design my own images.

 It's been 17 years, it has been washed many times, and I'm amazed the pictures are still legible. Some are brighter than others. I don't know if the brighter pictures are in an area of least use, positioned where less sun gets through a window to them, or what caused that. It was not a wall quilt. Mom used it on a daily basis. You can see in the photos what it looks like today.

 You can see in the corner that I used a photo of an advertisement found in a brochure listing some activities to see on the island.  Across from it in the opposite corner, I put a picture of the map of the island. I did the upper corners the same way with the second island we visited.

Since it was a photo quilt, I used one of the photos from the trip for my label. We had booked a boat trip and the captain had each customer go to the bow of the boat and "pose" with arms out to encompass the adventure like in the Titanic movie.

 TIP- It was so long ago I can't remember what all I learned from this quilt. I remember the love that went into it. LOL I did try to use patterned fabrics for the 2" squares. I thought  the "busyness" of the patterns of the squares would soften the lines around the photos to help them blend in, rather than just being squares of pictures "popping" out at you. Also, with the fading of the pictures, it still maintains its integrity by the fabrics blending with the softer pictures.