When my parents came back from a trip to Hawaii, my mom told me about the Hawaiian quilts they had seen in museums.
Two traditional Hawaiian quilts are appliqued quilts (with a design that might remind you of a paper snowflake) and Hawaiian flag quilts. The library will offer a kit the week of July 19 with instructions for making a notecard with a cut-paper design based on an appliqued quilt. I have also included a Hawaiian flag coloring page.
The picture book Luka’s Quilt shows a family making an appliqued Hawaiian quilt. A Is For Aloha: A Hawaii Alphabet has a picture of Queen Liliuokalani making a quilt in the “crazy quilt” style. I could not find very much information about Hawaiian quilts in the books or electronic resources in our library collection, so I included some information from Hawaiian museum websites.
The Bishop Museum, bishopmuseum.org, has a database with photographs of Hawaiian quilts.
The Honolulu Museum of Art, at honolulumusem.org, also has a collection of quilts. If you search the word “quilt” on their website, you can find lots of articles.
You can also do a Google search for “Hawaiian quilts” to find many examples of quilts (and even directions for how to make them). People keep coming up with new ideas, so (for example) you might find applique quilts that use patterned fabric instead of solid color fabric or the shapes of pineapples, sea turtles or dolphins instead of flowers.