Purple Butterflies

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!

Today I have two quilts to show.  

First, the small quilt for donation, which is also a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.  I made DOZENS of string blocks this year, and this is only the second quilt.

Lots of skinny strips and triangles make up these blocks.  I always feel thrifty when making them.  Can you spot the purple butterfly print?

The border is a different purple butterfly print.  Years ago I bought a bag of fabric at Goodwill, and there were SIX YARDS of this fabric in it.  I have loved using it.  It goes with most of the colors of the string blocks.

I've pinned up the back here to show you.  I bought this cotton fabric at the Winter Quilt Show a few years ago.  It cost $2 for a 2 yard piece.  Great, right?  But there was a problem.

These Easter theme borders were on either side of the dots.  They might have looked a little weird sideways on the quilt, so I cut them off.  (Don't worry, I'll find a use for them.)  The resulting dot print was narrow, but I pieced it to make it wide enough.  For quilting I did diagonal lines through the blocks.  The binding is a scrap of solid lavender.

So that's quilt #1, one of my usual small quilts for kids.  The next one is different.

This is officially a UFO.  And it has kind of a long story.

My niece Jenny died in August of 2021 from a massive aneurism at the age of 39.  Butterflies were her favorite thing, and purple/lavender was her favorite color.  I started making this quilt that fall, with the plan to give it to my sister as a comfort quilt.  I found this pieced butterfly pattern/tutorial online (click HERE), and started making blocks from Kaffe Fassett fabrics and light prints from my stash.

I had all the blocks made and the border (also a Kaffe print) ordered when my sister died in May of 2022.  For a while I couldn't even look at them.  I set the project aside.  What was I going to do with it now?  I didn't think it would be a good fit for her husband or her son.

In time, I decided to finish the quilt as a comfort quilt for me.  My friend Joey Mahieu is a professional quilter, and she quilted it for me.  I picked it up the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Can you see the hearts and swirls in the quilting?  Joey did a wonderful job (as always!).

This week I bound it.  The backing is a soft flannel, and Snicky the cat loved it so much he wouldn't let me sew!  I had to wait until he left the room.

I can't wait to snuggle up under the quilt after the Christmas quilts are put away.

Speaking of Christmas, it's almost here!  This week Little Guy had his program at school.  You can probably tell he loved it!  We loved it too.

The snow this week feels very seasonally appropriate. We will probably get lots more after the holidays, this is winter in Wisconsin, after all.
 

Tomorrow I'll be baking cookies with my daughters and grandchildren.  Icing and sprinkles and sugar, oh my!  

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!  And happy quilting to everyone!

Cheers for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy

Cynthia at Oh Scrap

Key West Butterflies

Does it count as a finished quilt if I don't have the binding sewn down yet? 
This is my butterflies quilt.  I finished the quilting, made the binding, and machine sewed it on yesterday, and will be sewing it down by hand this weekend.

(I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts today.  There's a link back at the end of the post.)

I call it Key West Butterflies because I appliqued a lot of these on a trip to Florida in 2014.  (I did a post about it called Back from Margaritaville)

Each butterfly is surrounded by a row of squares, cut from vintage fabrics.  Half of the butterflies are appliqued on white squares, and half are on blue.  They fly in different directions.

I think this orange one is my favorite.
I bought the butterflies on Ebay years ago.  They were just the butterfly shape, which had been cut out and embroidered, and the edges were basted under.  There were no backing squares.   Most of the fabrics in the butterflies are from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Here's the back!  Each of the 20 squares was quilted separately on the machine.  I used vintage fabrics for the backs and old fashioned cotton batting.

Most of the fabrics on the back are just vintage cottons, but a couple are from feedsacks.

This pink print with the enormous blueberries (?) was a skirt I bought in an antique store.

It's about time I finished this!  It has been languishing for months.
I'm looking forward to watching some PBS mysteries while I sew the binding down, and then get a label sewn on.
I'm having such a good start to this new year.  I hope you are too!

Back to Crazy Mom

Back from Margaritaville

 This is the sunset, taken from the pier in Key West, Florida.  I can't believe I was there just over a week ago.
My mom and I flew down and visited family.  We didn't get to see everybody, sadly, but we had a good visit and a break from the wintry weather back home.

I took along some handwork, and I was glad I did.  It helped pass the time in the airports.  The butterfly above was appliqued at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, while waiting on a flight to Orlando.

I have had this project for a long time.  I bought the butterflies on Ebay.  Not only were they cut out, the edges were basted, ready for applique, and the black embroidery was done.

I finished this one in the Key West Airport, waiting for my flight back home.  You might be able to see the pencil lines on it, outlining the head and body and separating the wings.  I think these are quilting lines.
I didn't have to take a lot of equipment with me to work on these blocks--just the butterflies, the cut squares, white thread, needles, and a child's pair of scissors (TSA even let me get on the plane with them).  I used white thread because that's how these were typically done back in the day.  Plus a lot of these fabrics have a white background or are multicolored.  It saved having to bring all sorts of colors of thread.

I laid them out on the bed in our hotel room.  Half of the blocks are appliqued to a cream colored square, and the other half are on blue.  BTW, this is the same blue fabric my husband used for his display case at the library.  He'll have to use a different one next time!

Judging from the fabrics, the butterflies were probably cut out in the 1950s or 1960s.  There are some really interesting old prints here.  There are only 2 repeats:  the red gingham and the yellow gingham.  All the blocks are cotton, no poly.
I will probably set them like this, alternating blue and white and with the butterflies oriented as you can see.  I am thinking about adding some scraps for sashing, though.  I do have a big bag of 50s-60s scraps.

Speaking of scraps, I actually BOUGHT some.  Again.  Why are other people's scraps so much more interesting than my own?  I have had a lot of fun with Debbie's scraps, I bought a scrap bag at a quilt shop we visited near Madison, and now I've bought one closer to home.

This one came from Ye Olde Schoolhouse in Cedarburg.  I had to drop by the museum the other day (the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts:  Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts) to pick up some files, so I stopped by Ye Olde Schoolhouse, which is just around the corner.  Here's their web page:  Ye Olde Schoolhouse Quilt Shop

I bought some sale fabrics for sashing and borders, a new book, some not-on-sale fabrics, and this scrap bag, which was absolutely stuffed with beautiful fabric.  The pieces range from small squares to full width of fabric strips.

I stacked it up here.  It was kind of unbelievable how much I got for $10.  If you love reproduction fabrics and need some more scraps (NEED??? Hahaha) this is a great deal.  I wonder if you could make a whole quilt top from a scrap bag.  Hmm...that might make an interesting challenge.
Things are warming up around here, making me start to believe in spring, but I'm sure winter has a few surprises still in store for us.  For now, I'm going to keep calm and keep sewing.