Before the hexagons there were pineapples

Long before I started making hexagons, there was this quilt.

The pieced blocks that make up the center of the quilt were made using a pattern called "Pineapple Blossom" by Bonnie Hunter. Each block uses 3 sizes of strips, and being a lover of scrappy quilts, I made neat little piles of as many different fabrics as I could find.

When the pieced blocks were completed and sewn together, I decided I wanted to add a border with some applique. I cut some white fabric into wide borders and then placed some leftover strips aound the quilt in a few different locations to decide where I wanted the appliqued flowers to go. This is just one way that a digital camera is such a handy tool in quilmaking. I took pictures of each of the arrangements so I could compare them and see what I liked best:

I liked the arrangement with applique in the opposite corners, so I pulled out some graph paper and decided on how to arrange the flowers and leaves.

It was easiest to complete the applique on the borders first, and then sew them onto the quilt. Here's what the appliqued flowers looked like after the quilting was done, and a closeup of the quilting in the plain white corners:

I didn't do the machine quilting. I'm more of a stitch in the ditch kind of quilter, and I just didn't know how to handle all that white space in the borders, so I had it professionally quilted by a longarmer.

I had lots of strips leftover and some of them are ending up as hexagons for my current project. However, any notion I had of using up my 30's scraps for this hexagon project is pretty amusing to me, now that I see how many hexagons can be made from just one 1 1/2" strip. :-)