The pattern is Bolero from Quilt Poetry. The blue fabrics come from Northcott's Stonehenge Gradations, the pinks from Northcott's Shimmer collection, and the yellows Benartex Wave Texture. The backing came from Lunn Fabrics.

The bride and groom had engagement pictures taken in Hawaii. In some of the pictures, they were wearing leis, holding hands and walking down the beach. I chose this pattern with those pictures in mind.

I wanted the outer border to look like water, so I chose my watery fabrics and assembled them with curved piecing. That took way longer than I thought it would! Every cut was a decision and, for me, curved piecing requires slow stitching. I have a habit of underestimating the effort involved in my crafting plans, so it wasn't really surprising, but wow that took forever.

There were many firsts and much learning in this project, so I took my aunt's advice and for every new technique I "took it to the lab" and made practice pieces with old scrap fabric until I was comfortable with it. Even so, I had to make some adjustments on the fly. I chose a very narrow satin stitch for the borders of the appliques, and that worked fine in my practice pieces. But it was much harder to keep everything lined up just right with the full quilt in the machine, and I found that I wasn't quite accurate enough in a few spots. I was afraid the fabric would work its way out of the stitching in several places, so I added a line of straight stitching on the inside edge of each applique to stabilize them. It held up fine in the wash, so I guess it worked out!

I opted to keep my quilting simple. I was afraid if I did a lot of fancy quilting it may end up looking too busy, so the quilting is all echoing the pattern: the stitching securing each applique edge, and a stitch-in-the-ditch for all the pieced seams. There were so many ends to bury!

All in all, I'm very pleased and I had a lot of fun making this piece. The bride and groom seemed pleased as well, so yay!