the last present under the tree -- Butterfly

Early this year, my daughter helped design a butterfly quilt. I can't remember if I've shown this pic before, but we worked out the shape with graph paper and then she colored it.
Then I had her go through the scrap bins and pick out the matching fabrics.
This project took me forever to sew, I think because I chose 2.5" squares and it just seemed daunting to sew that many little ones together. It wasn't so bad when I worked on it, but making myself work on it was the problem.
And then it was the week before Christmas. Her brother's quilt was finished and under the tree. I still had half of the butterfly to piece together and realized--hey, it's a week before Christmas! I also thought to ask her how big she was picturing this quilt. I had been thinking throw size. She was thinking "I want this quilt to cover my bed." Thankfully I had an order of white fabric in the mail due to arrive any day. That much white makes me a bit antsy, but it's hers.
So at about 10:30 on Christmas eve I finished and threw it into the wash. I worked on another assembly project and then put it in the dryer (after making sure some marking pen on it came out in the wash as advertised).

Just in time--Butterfly:


Because of the butterfly, I decided to quilt it using flowers. I used Allison's tutorial on Cluck Cluck Sew and most of them came out ok. It did go better with practice but some also ended up a bit loopy. I ended up with a blank spot that I missed as I moved around the quilt, so I went back in and quilted her name (not enough light to see that on a picture).
I also used some embroidery thread for some hand-quilted antennas.

When she told me she wanted the quilt to be twin sized, the main (mild) panic was what to use for backing. But it turns out that I bought her backing back in June. In Istanbul. Very forward thinking of me. It was a wide fabric so it did not have to be pieced, another plus.


The binding was a pink fabric covered with butterflies that had been my initial choice for a back, had it been smaller. I'm glad she wanted bigger.

So that's the last quilt I will finish this year. I think it was the 22nd quilt, unless I have left off more on my "quilts I made" page. One of my short-term goals is to split that page into years, since it's getting a bit long to scroll through and I have lots more in the works.

Comments

  1. Very well done! Nothing like the pressure of last-minute or night-before finishing! Great backing fabric too, definitely a good purchase!

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