I'm From the South

... that's the title native New Zealander Dorry has given her 7th International Round Robin quilt, which started with her requested theme of "South Pacific." There are a lot of pictures of this quilt already on my blog, but I think all the people who helped to make it for Dorry should see their individual contributions, so I posted quite a few more pictures now that it's quilted.

First an overview of the spiral layout I created for the blocks.


Dorry's block is the Tiki Man. He is the First Man for New Zealand's native Maori people. Dorry's Tiki Man did not need any embellishment - just a lot of outlining and stitch-in-the-ditch, with a fern encircling him to tie in with the spiral theme.


Heather made four six-inch blocks with Maori koru designs - I'm only showing two of them here. All four were echo-quilted to reinforce the strong design lines of her applique work. The blue and tan nine patch above Heather's blue block is possibly where the quilting of the colored spiral shows best in my photos.


Rhonda's block is in two parts: the upper scene of the Whangarei Heads includes the native Harakeke flowers on the coast. For quilting, the sky was treated with spiral swirls, the water got lines parallel to the shore to show waves, and the sand has pebbles. Below is the symbolic Silver Fern, simply outlined with a smaller spiral fill in the background.


Judy appliqued this flowing koru design that helps to keep the spiral moving around the upper corner. I echo quilted the white area and outlined the koru motifs on her green fabric.


Jo made this next block that combines the pohutukawa with another Maori koru design. Jo used two background fabrics, so the quilting is in two parts, with echoes for the floral side and the inside of the koru, and swirls on the outside of the oval-shaped motif.


This block by Dorry's sister Kerry takes the same pohutukawa flower and stylizes it to beautiful effect. The quilting consists of several lines of echos for some of the blossoms, then swirls to be consistent with the sky in other blocks.

Kerry also made this Kereru in a Puriri tree. I quilted some of the background fabric's leaves and curls, but kept the foreground leaves and bird simple so they would stand out in 3-d.


Kerry ambitiously made three blocks for her sister. The last of Kerry's blocks is Dorry's favorite Fish and Chips stand with a trio of Pukeko walking by. I quilted this scene with more swirling skies and pebbles for the road/sidewalk, and a lot of outline stitching.

For completeness, the John Dory (a species that might be served at the Fish and Chips stand) was my contribution to the quilt's blocks. In this photo you may be able to see the stylized fern background fill I used everywhere but on the colored spiral. You can also see how I used the Hoffman New Zealand Challenge fabric Kerry supplied me with to supplement all the swirling, spiraling, or leafy blues and greens in one-inch squares to fill in the background of the quilt.


And last is the border area. The 3/4 inch inner border has a little tiny leaf vine. The outer border got my quilted adaptation of a Maori border design.


The International Round Robin group has recently been tossing about for a name - "Remarkable Robins" has become the favorite - do you think it is a good one?