Keiki Aloha

Last year I undertook a pretty ambitious project consisting of 100 original block printed pieces of Keiki Aloha wear. I have always loved the look of ink on natural fibers and knew when I started this project I wanted either cotton or linen. I searched online for button down shirts and dresses and was able to find cotton shirts and linen dresses. From there I got to work.

Each part of this project took planning, from choosing what I wanted to print on each garment, in what color, figuring out what to carve and setting aside time to do the actual carving itself.

Here is where it starts to get ambitious - the idea I had in mind was for the dresses to be 2-toned with the tops of the dresses a different color from the skirts. In order to do this I had to go in and seam rip each and every dress. Once all of the tops were separated I dyed them in batches in select colors to match the block prints I was using.

Dyed top on top of natural linen skirt attachment

Once the tops were dyed, I got to print my blocks on the skirts - yellow ginger, kalo, opihi, kokio, and upena - all prints special to me. But the most gratifying part was stitching the pieces back together to see the finished project.

A complete upena dress - for the fishermen’s daughter

The button down shirts were much simpler, only made difficult by the fact that I needed to complete this look with none other than coconut buttons and not the white plastic buttons the shirts came with. So back I went with my seam ripper to rip the buttons off of 50 shirts to hand sew coconut buttons and the result was totally worth it in my opinion.

Coconut button on the i’a and upena print

This project took three months in total while flying between two islands and was truly a labor of love. I hope who ever was fortunate enough to get their hands on one of these pieces can see and feel the love and pure intention that went into creating each and every piece.