Red and White and Butterflies All Over

This quilt has reached its destination where the new owner's mother is reluctant to let her daughter sit on or sleep under it.

Red and White and Butterflies All Over was designed using a selection of red and white prints Ellie sent me, along with her wishlist of reds, white and a few others on eQuilter. The butterflies are my favourite, but I loved working with such a crisp palette.

It took a while to come up with a workable design, and in the end I made several adjustments to the borders to get suitable dimensions for a single bed without compromising her preferred central layout.

The quilting was a rather drawn-out process, with innumerable thread tails to finish off (I even lost count!) and a lot of quilt bulk to manipulate through the throat of the machine (I am longing for a long-arm quilting machine!). But I am in love with the fan effect the quilting created, and am glad I tried something a bit different from the plain in-the-ditch quilting I would have done only a year ago. I've got a few new books on the actual quilting part of the process, and they have me inspired - but taking baby-steps! I still believe it's the piecing that makes the quilt, not the quilting (especially at my level), but the quilting can certainly add a lot.

And with some of the remaining fabric, I made a couple of matching piped cushion covers.