BQF Applique Quilt: Fluttering By

I made Fluttering By for my Gran. Gran taught me how to do English paper piecing when I was in my teens - unwittingly setting me on the path to quilt addiction. I've now been quilting over half my life!

After Gran moved to a smaller home several years ago, we decided she needed a new quilt for her smaller, single (twin) bed. That it would feature butterflies was a foregone conclusion. Any letter from Gran is instantly recognisable even by my children, by the flock of butterfly stickers she adds!

I had Vicki Welsh custom-dye the wide fabric for me in a gradient of Gran's favourite greens and turquoises. All the butterflies are cut from my considerable stash of Vicki's hand-dyed gradient fabrics, too.

I found a selection of butterfly silhouettes online and printed them out in several sizes, then traced lots and lots of them onto Lite Steam-a-seam2 - from memory the quilt has 137 appliqued butterflies!

It took a while to position them to my satisfaction, then I fused them in place before sandwiching the quilt. They're free-motion appliqued in place, and I went around each one twice, using matching Aurifil threads. By doing this after sandwiching, the applique stitches are also quilting. While appliqueing the butterflies, I added the antennae. There's also one wholecloth butterfly, for something a bit different.

Once all the butterflies were done, I quilted some feather plumes in the large open spaces, then filled the rest of the space with a free-hand swirly design which worked well in all the odd spaces.

I finished by binding with the main fabric. I'd carefully cut what I needed for the top leaving enough spare all around for the binding. I flipped it so the turquoise section is at the bottom, against the green, and vice versa.

Size: Approx 66x82in
Finished: 2012
Techniques: Machine applique, free-motion quilting
Design: original

This is my entry in the Applique quilt category of the May 2013 Blogger's Quilt Festival.