I bought the pattern for this pineapple wall hanging about two years ago and it was placed on the back burner of projects to complete. I even had fabric picked out for it and ready to go for several months. I love this pattern, and it even has a home picked out in my orange ombre dining room. This pattern was also deceiving in that it took much longer to complete than expected.
I chose to do this all in batiks, and even the white, which looks solid, is not. I don't like solid fabrics - I think they're boring. There was a lot of precutting, including the very thin strips in between the blue squares and the even smaller cornerstones, where the white lines intersect.
The first thing I did was lay out the blue squares a million different ways so that there weren't duplicates next to each other or diagonal from each other. I even tried to not have the same ones in the same rows, however that did not work out so well. Once the layout is decided upon, you sew the squares and single strips with cornerstones into rows.
Here's something that also isn't fun - sewing 1" squares onto the ends of 1" strips. Piecing fabric that small just is not my idea of a good time. The sewing machine just wants to chew on fabric that small.
After the long strips were completed, I sewed the longer skinny strips to the square strips trying to match up the corners of those teenie tiny cornerstones. And shockingly, they mostly came pretty straight (I've been practicing piecing more accurately).
Next it was the not fun part. The applique. I've decided that I don't like applique, which is awesome since I have two applique projects lined up in the future. For anyone who has not done machine applique, there are two types - raw edge applique (for people who value their sanity) and turned edge applique, which I will probably never ever do.
To do raw edge applique, you need to trace the reversed pattern pieces onto a piece of Heat-N-Bond or Wonder Under (double sided fusible). Then you iron it to the fabric, then trim each tiny piece, figure out the placement on the large fabric, peel the back, iron it on, and stitch it down.
There were three issues with the applique on this project. The first is that the pattern pieces called for the wrong numbers of a couple of colors, so as I was working on the layout I found that I had several pieces cut in the wrong fabric. Secondly, there are a bagillion small pieces which are: 1. a pain to cut, 2. a pain to place, and 3. a pain to sew down. Some of the corners and tiny circles were not easy to sew. Thirdly, I must have had defective Heat-n-Bond, because as I was sewing about a third of the pieces fell off (after I worked so hard at laying them out). Saying I was unhappy about this would be putting it mildly, and I ended up taking a glue stick to the rogue pieces.
After appliqueing the pieces that belonged to the pineapple, it was time to do the same to the borders. These were much easier to lay out, as the not-quite-white fabric that I used was see-through enough that I could see the outlines of the pattern when it was placed underneath.
After all the applique was complete, I sewed the many borders on each side, including the green and white striped borders and the appliqued borders at the top and bottom.
Then I headed to the longarm, where I chose a blue variegated thread and a cherry blossom pattern - the leaves and circular cherries seemed to match the applique well.
I decided to do a tabbed hanging method for this piece. I found a nice copper colored curtain rod with a twisted styled end-piece which matches the general style of the hanging. I decided that I needed 5 tabs to make the hanging hang evenly. I cut 10 6" strips of blue fabric, stitched them together down the long sides, turned them right-side out, top stitched them, ironed them in half, and stitched them to the top raw edge of the hanging (under the binding). I sewed the binding (by machine - I detest hand-binding) to the back, with the tabs underneath. Then I folded the tabs up so they wouldn't get stuck when I was sewing the binding to the front.
I picked another variegated blue thread and a decorative stitch for the binding.
Finally, label time. I named the hanging "Southern Comfort," as pineapples are associated with welcoming and hospitality in the south. I digitized the pineapple leaves on top of the "S" to make the label look more interesting.
Despite the more challenging aspects of this hanging, I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I can't wait to hang it in my dining room!
http://www.cherryblossomsquilting.com/product/welcome/
