Quilt from Men's Hawaiian Shirts, Part 1

My current project takes me back to my start in quilting. I had always been intrigued by the complex craft. Eight years ago or so, a yard sale featured scads and scads of oversized Hawaiian shirts. A light bulb went off - they would be perfect for quilting practice. I knew how expensive retail fabric could be. I bought around 40 of them at $1 each. The image below was one of those pieces created from that lot. It covered a work cubicle hole in the wall. 

This project, co-worker requested, is a Hawaiian-shirt themed quilt. She had 8 of them from her family I processed for the material. Large scale prints limit pattern choices. I opted for 8" cut squares to showcase the different prints of Bishop Street men's shirts. The first few blocks of 4 are shown in the lead-off image. 

Part 2 will feature the quilt top aka flimsy with all of the 8" squares sew together with borders in the light denim fabric only at the top, bottom, and sides. 

Optional: Add a piano keys border with the remnant fabric (I may only have enough to do that type of border only on the top and bottom, not on the sides).  

I am learning the craft by trial and error with a few YouTube tutorials thrown in. I changed my technique of matching the seams on quilt blocks. Rather than sew the block from corner to corner, I match the seams and sew from the middle to end, then turn the block and finish from middle to end. Doing it that way means the block hasn't skewed and the lines match up. It seems to be working. 

The appliqued flower quilt is finally finished. These blocks came to me in a $40 thrifted lot. I sold half of them, and kept these for this quilt. A couple of the blocks were missing their green stems, so I added those. 

The extra wide fabric backing is shown at the top, folded over. The binding is the same color as the pink outer border. The quilted pattern is flamingos and flowers. 

Our weather has gone from warming to cold and rainy. Everything is so greeen!